Better, cheaper, faster — three words that best describe how businesses try to achieve growth. All valiant objectives and completely within reach, but there’s always something that seems to get in the way. Remove that ‘something’ and it’s smooth sailing ahead. The problem is, a lack of courage can keep many businesses from looking inward and identifying the true barrier to growth.
Peel back that onion and you’ll likely find the problem originates with people. In my experience coaching business leaders and entrepreneurs, I’ve seen firsthand that the primary frustration for business owners is people issues. In many cases, coaching, training and vetting tend to take a backseat to other priorities. Businesses end up with team members who don’t quite fit or understand how to contribute to the team’s success.
If not people, then the likeliest of culprits will be found in your processes. Processes can easily go undocumented, especially during the startup phase. It takes time to write it all down, and most founders and business owners have bigger issues at hand. As operations scale, however, every project will feel like the first project without well-documented processes. Without a repeatable prototype, teams flounder before finding their footing.
Tackling The Wrong Problem Again And Again
When you don’t hit the problem at its root, it’s a bit like playing Whac-A-Mole. Whack away, but the problem will keep popping up in different areas of the organization. You’ll waste time, money and effort chasing down the small issues when the root cause goes undetected.
At my company, the team and I spent years struggling because we failed to correct the main problem. Looking back, I think everyone knew it was a people issue all along, but everyone ignored it because the person in question was productive. The problem just kept growing, and the employee kept sucking more time and energy out of the leadership team.
Once the team decided to exit this employee, it was like the business was set free. The team still had to right some wrongs in the wake of their departure, but employees were generally happier and more productive as our business was healthy again.
How To Identify Issues And Unlock Potential
This, naturally, leads to the question: How does an organization identify and solve the right problem getting in the way of growth? The following strategies are often the best places to start.
1. Build A Healthy, Functional, Cohesive Team
With so many personalities coming to a team, it’s easy to see why group dynamics are at risk of changing. Should one colleague be too critical of another, the rest of the team may shut down in fear of equal criticism. Should a team member neglect to contribute beyond their agreement, resentment can set in. Given enough time, habits and behaviors can lead to team dysfunction, making it more important than ever to monitor and identify its root cause.
Patrick M. Lencioni wrote about the primary causes for dysfunction in his book, “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.” They include an “absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability and inattention to results.”
The first three are fairly clear, but the last two may require further explanation. Avoidance of accountability involves discomfort in holding colleagues accountable. With inattention to results, team members focus too heavily on individual goals, which can impact team outcomes.
Look at your teams and think critically about whether any of these dysfunctions could be causing bigger problems throughout your organization. This will help you dig down to the root to build a healthier, more functional and more cohesive team.
2. View Business From More Than One Perspective
One exercise for uncovering core issues is to systematically break down key business components and search for where things could be going wrong. The six key business components to evaluate are:
Vision: Your vision should be clear for every employee.
People: Your people should be bought into that vision and aligned with your values.
Data: Leaders must be able to access data that can drive the company forward.
Issues: Your employees need an easy way to bring issues to the attention of the leadership team.
Processes: Processes should be clearly documented and accessible to any employee who needs them.
Traction: Businesses need the discipline of execution to gain traction on ideas.
If something seems off in one or multiple of these categories, it’s a sure sign that your core problems are stemming from those areas of business. Start there to unearth the root cause of what’s holding back growth.
3. Lean On Accountability
Once you have a healthy team in place and an understanding of where the problem resides, it’s time to focus on accountability. Delineate who owns responsibility for what and consider assigning everyone a specific metric to drive the business forward in a predictable way. This way, your people can see exactly what their roles and responsibilities are and how their success is measured.
With accountability clearly mapped out, it will be easier to see who should be in charge of digging in to discover specific problems and develop solutions. Considering that the majority of problems are people problems, work with this person to develop resolutions based on training and coaching.
Getting to the root cause of any problem takes practice. You’re venturing into uncharted territories, after all. It also takes courage, as you’ll need to ask hard questions involving your business. But the time and attention it takes will be well worth the effort. Once solved, those problems will go away forever — as long as you stop looking at your business through rose-colored glasses.
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