The problem your team keeps solving is not the problem

Every leadership team has an issue that will not stay solved. It gets named, worked, and closed. Two quarters later it returns wearing a different label, and the team treats it as new.

The recurrence is the useful information. A genuinely hard problem gets solved once and stays solved, even if solving it was painful. A problem that regenerates is being produced by something, and the something is usually structural.

Three things that look like team problems and are not

Most recurring issues resolve into one of a small number of structural causes, and none of them are fixed by the team trying harder.

• An unowned decision. Two functions both believe the call is theirs, so it gets made twice and unmade twice. Presented as a communication issue.
• A conflicting incentive. Two leaders are measured on outcomes that cannot both improve. Presented as a personality clash.
• A missing forum. There is no place where a certain class of decision can legitimately be made, so it leaks into corridors. Presented as a lack of alignment.

In each case the team is behaving rationally given the structure they sit inside. Ask them to communicate better and they will, briefly, and the issue will return, because communication was not producing it.

How to tell which one you have

The question that separates these fastest is not about the problem. It is about the last time it was solved. Ask the team what changed the last time this went away, and what changed back.

If nothing structural changed, the issue was managed rather than resolved, which explains the return. If something structural did change and then reverted, the question becomes who reverted it and what pressure they were under, which is usually where the real work is.

Why this needs someone outside the team

Structural causes are hard to see from inside for an ordinary reason: everyone in the room is part of the structure. The unowned decision is unowned because two people in the room both believe it is theirs, and both are sincere. The conflicting incentive is invisible because each leader can see only their own scorecard.

This is the work systemic team coaching does. Not helping a team communicate, but making the system they operate inside visible to them, so the thing producing the problem can be changed rather than the people being asked to absorb it.

The test of whether it worked is not how the session felt. It is whether the issue comes back.