When the same costly problem survives multiple competent attempts to solve it, the next solution may matter less than the organisation attempting to implement it.
Satya Nadella’s Hit Refresh is largely the story of Microsoft’s transformation and the thinking behind it. It is not a methodology for eliminating recurring organisational problems, and it certainly does not provide the complete answer to karamawari.
But it contains several ideas that are highly relevant.
Because Nadella recognised something leaders confronting persistent problems eventually have to confront themselves: sometimes the organisation’s existing assumptions, behaviours and conditions are precisely what make the problem so difficult to solve.
The organisation can become trapped by what once made it successful
One of the strongest themes in Hit Refresh is the need to renew rather than simply protect what already exists.
Microsoft had been enormously successful. But success creates its own danger.
The assumptions behind yesterday’s victories can quietly become today’s constraints.
Products become identities. Business models become beliefs. Established ways of working become evidence of how things “should” be done.
The same thing happens with recurring problems.
An organisation develops a way of handling customer complaints, project overruns, operational failures, cost pressures or control weaknesses. That response may initially work.
Eventually it becomes institutionalised.
When the problem returns, the organisation does not necessarily reconsider its understanding of the problem. It reaches for a stronger version of the established response.
More governance. More reporting. More controls. More technology. More accountability.
That is fertile ground for karamawari: enormous effort without corresponding forward movement.
Culture is not sitting beside the problem
Nadella famously placed considerable emphasis on changing Microsoft’s culture, particularly moving from a “know-it-all” mentality toward a “learn-it-all” mentality.
For recurring problems, that distinction is profound.
A know-it-all organisation approaches recurrence as an execution failure.
“We already know what the problem is.”
“We know what needs to happen.”
“People just need to execute.”
“We need greater accountability.”
So the organisation doubles down.
A learn-it-all organisation treats recurrence differently.
If a competent organisation implemented a credible solution and the problem returned, then something about its understanding may be incomplete.
Recurrence becomes evidence.
Instead of asking only, “Why wasn’t the solution implemented properly?”, leadership can ask:
“What does the return of this problem tell us that our original diagnosis missed?”
That question changes the investigation.
Empathy is an investigative capability
Another important theme in Hit Refresh is empathy.
In business, empathy is sometimes treated as a leadership virtue primarily concerned with relationships. But when tackling persistent problems, it has another purpose.
It helps leaders understand why apparently irrational behaviour may actually be rational.
Consider a manager who repeatedly delays escalating problems.
The obvious diagnosis might be poor accountability.
But suppose previous managers who escalated problems early were publicly challenged, blamed for issues outside their control or quietly regarded as incapable.
The behaviour suddenly makes more sense.
Or employees keep circumventing a control.
Perhaps they are careless.
But perhaps complying with the control makes meeting another non-negotiable target virtually impossible.
The behaviour is still problematic. But understanding why it makes sense reveals something that simply demanding different behaviour does not.
That is where empathy becomes diagnostic.
It helps leadership move beyond judging behaviour toward understanding the conditions producing it.
Challenge the assumptions underneath the solution
Microsoft’s transformation also required reconsidering deeply embedded assumptions about what Microsoft was and how it should compete.
This matters because recurring problems frequently survive inside assumptions nobody realises they are making.
Leadership sees declining margins and assumes the problem is cost.
It sees project delays and assumes the problem is execution.
It sees customer complaints and assumes the problem is service.
It sees control failures and assumes the problem is compliance.
Each diagnosis immediately creates a logical solution.
Cut costs.
Improve execution.
Retrain service teams.
Strengthen controls.
The dangerous part is that these solutions can be perfectly sensible responses to incorrectly framed problems.
Karamawari often begins there.
The visible impact becomes the definition of the problem, and the organisation starts solving before it has travelled far enough backwards.
Impacts come from decisions.
Decisions emerge from behaviours.
Behaviours are shaped by assumptions.
And assumptions make sense within particular organisational conditions.
Conditions → Assumptions → Behaviours → Decisions → Impacts.
Changing the impact without changing what generates it creates temporary improvement at best.
A refresh is different from another restart
This may be the most useful idea CEOs can borrow from Hit Refresh.
Organisations constantly restart.
New transformation.
New system.
New structure.
New executive.
New consultant.
New governance model.
New improvement programme.
But restarting activity is not the same as refreshing the thinking underneath it.
If the same assumptions remain, the organisation can spend millions changing what it does while preserving why it keeps doing it.
That is why Hit Refresh is useful to karamawari, but not sufficient.
Curiosity, empathy, cultural renewal and willingness to challenge established assumptions create the conditions for better problem solving. They do not, by themselves, identify the precise conditions and decision patterns generating a particular recurring problem.
That still requires disciplined investigation.
Stop asking how to fix it again
After the third recurrence, leadership should become suspicious of the problem definition itself.
Perhaps the organisation does not need another solution yet.
Perhaps it needs to rediscover what it thinks it knows.
That means putting previous failures side by side, examining what remained unchanged, listening differently to the people closest to the problem and questioning assumptions that have become organisational facts.
Sometimes the breakthrough begins when leadership stops saying, “We know what the problem is.”
Because the most expensive form of karamawari may be an organisation repeatedly getting better at solving a problem it has never properly understood.
If your recurring problem has survived every solution you have thrown at it, what would you have to question about your organisation before you were prepared to question the problem itself?
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