Some of the most troubled organisations are not standing still. They are moving furiously while repeatedly arriving back at the same problem.
There is a Japanese word that captures this remarkably well: 空回り, karamawari.
Literally, it evokes the idea of something spinning without engaging, like an engine racing while the wheels fail to gain traction. More broadly, it describes effort that fails to produce the intended result.
That makes karamawari a useful way to think about recurring business problems.
Because when the same operational failure, customer issue, margin problem, cultural dysfunction or delivery crisis returns year after year, lack of effort is rarely the explanation.
Usually, people have been working extraordinarily hard.
The uncomfortable possibility is that they have been solving the wrong problem.
The solutions are often perfectly reasonable
When a problem appears, organisations naturally respond to what they can see.
Costs are too high? Launch a cost-reduction programme.
Projects are late? Introduce stronger project governance.
Customer complaints are increasing? Redesign the customer-service process.
Accountability is unclear? Restructure.
Information is fragmented? Implement a new system.
Performance is deteriorating? Replace the leader.
None of these responses is inherently foolish. Given the problem as it has been defined, each may be entirely logical.
And that is precisely why recurring problems can survive highly competent leadership teams.
A good solution to the wrong problem is still the wrong solution.
The intervention may reduce the symptoms. Performance improves. Pressure subsides. Leadership moves on.
Then, six months or two years later, something remarkably familiar appears.
Perhaps it has a different name.
Perhaps it emerges in another business unit.
Perhaps the numbers look slightly different.
But underneath, the organisation is back where it started.
Another turn of the wheel.
Start with the impact, but don't stop there
Most recurring problems first become visible through their impacts.
Margin deteriorates.
Customers leave.
Projects slip.
Costs increase.
Employees resign.
Risk events occur.
Management attention gets consumed.
These impacts matter enormously. But an impact tells us what happened, not necessarily why it happened.
Immediately beneath those impacts are usually decisions.
A project continued despite warning signs.
A customer commitment was accepted despite insufficient capacity.
Investment was deferred.
A risk was tolerated.
A poor performer remained in a critical position.
An unrealistic target was approved.
Understanding those decisions takes us closer to the problem.
But we still haven't reached it.
Decisions emerge from behaviours
Behind decisions sit patterns of behaviour.
People avoid escalating bad news.
Managers protect their own functions.
Executives prioritise short-term numbers.
Teams work around broken processes.
Leaders rescue problems personally.
People wait for senior approval rather than exercising judgement.
Those behaviours frequently become the target of organisational interventions.
Leadership programmes are introduced. Values are refreshed. Accountability frameworks are created. People are told to collaborate, challenge, innovate or take ownership.
Yet behaviour is rarely random.
People behave in ways that make sense to them.
Which means the more interesting question is:
What makes that behaviour seem reasonable?
Behind behaviour are assumptions
Consider an employee who doesn't challenge a senior executive.
The visible behaviour is silence.
It would be easy to conclude that the employee lacks courage.
But suppose their underlying assumption is:
“Challenging senior leaders damages careers here.”
Now their silence looks rather different.
Or consider a manager who conceals a struggling project.
Perhaps they assume:
“Leaders expect solutions, not problems.”
A business unit protecting its own resources might believe:
“If we don't defend our budget, someone else will take it.”
These assumptions shape behaviour, which influences decisions, which ultimately creates impacts.
But assumptions themselves don't appear from nowhere.
Conditions teach people what makes sense
This is where recurring problems become particularly interesting.
What conditions inside the organisation are reinforcing those assumptions?
Perhaps executives publicly ask for challenge but react defensively when challenged.
Perhaps bonuses reward individual business-unit performance while leaders simultaneously demand enterprise collaboration.
Perhaps previous executives who reported problems early suffered reputational consequences.
Perhaps targets are achievable only by taking risks nobody openly acknowledges.
Perhaps decision rights are unclear, so escalating everything upwards is safer than acting independently.
Perhaps the organisation celebrates heroic recovery more enthusiastically than preventing crises in the first place.
People observe these conditions.
They interpret them.
Assumptions form.
Behaviours follow.
Decisions are made.
Impacts appear.
And leadership responds to those impacts with another solution.
The wheel spins again.
The recurring problem is often the end of a chain
This gives CEOs and boards a different way to examine persistent problems:
Conditions → Assumptions → Behaviours → Decisions → Impacts
Traditional problem-solving frequently travels only partway backwards.
The organisation sees the impact and identifies the decision immediately preceding it.
“We lost the customer because delivery failed.”
So delivery gets fixed.
But why did the delivery decision make sense?
What behaviours shaped it?
What assumptions drove those behaviours?
And critically:
What organisational conditions made those assumptions reasonable?
Unless those questions are answered, the organisation risks changing the manifestation of the problem without changing its ability to reproduce it.
Stop asking what else you can try
This is why another solution is not necessarily progress.
Technology can accelerate karamawari.
A restructure can reorganise it.
Consultants can optimise it.
New processes can formalise it.
Harder work can sustain it.
None of those interventions necessarily changes the conditions generating the recurring problem.
The breakthrough often begins when leadership stops asking:
“Why didn't the last solution work?”
and starts asking:
“Why did we believe that was the problem we needed to solve?”
That question turns attention away from failed interventions and towards the thinking that produced them.
And for CEOs who have watched capable people attack the same recurring problem several times, that distinction matters.
Because persistent problems are not evidence that an organisation hasn't tried hard enough.
Sometimes they are evidence that it has been applying enormous capability, money and attention to the wrong point in the chain.
If your organisation has been working harder and harder on the same recurring problem, what if the lack of progress isn't telling you to try harder, but telling you that the real problem is somewhere you haven't yet looked?
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