Thinking for leaders dealing with persistent problems
Karamawari writes about the organisational patterns that make recurring problems difficult to see and expensive to leave unresolved: how evidence becomes representation, why reasonable fixes fail, where capacity disappears and what leaders can learn when the same outcome keeps returning.
Your Assumption May Be Costing More Than Your Problem
Some of the most expensive recurring problems begin when an assumption quietly enters a decision as a fact. A customer leaves. A project misses another milestone. Costs increase. Performance falls....
Australia’s 170-Year Railway Problem: When Yesterday’s Decisions Become Today’s Cost
Some recurring problems become so embedded that eventually nobody asks why they still exist. They simply budget for the inconvenience. Australia’s railway gauges are a remarkable example. For...
Nintendo Stopped Trying to Win the Wrong Game
One of the most expensive mistakes a CEO can make is becoming exceptionally good at solving a problem the business never needed to solve. In the early 2000s, Nintendo faced formidable competitors....
Start With Why the Problem Keeps Coming Back
When an organisation has spent millions solving the same problem repeatedly, the question is no longer why the latest solution failed. It is why everyone keeps believing they are solving the right...
The Fifth Element of Problem Solving: What Your Recurring Problems Are Missing
When the same expensive problem keeps returning, the organisation may not need a better solution. It may be missing an element without which no solution can work. Luc Besson’s 1997 film The...
Alan Mulally and The Turnaround that Stopped Ford Driving Off a Cliff
When Alan Mulally arrived at Ford in 2006, one of his most important discoveries was not that Ford lacked capable people; it was that the organisation had become remarkably good at preventing those...
