Some recurring problems survive because leaders become exceptionally good at eliminating the people, incidents and failures they can see, while leaving untouched the conditions that produced them.
That is one of the more interesting organisational lessons hidden inside Léon: The Professional.
On the surface, Luc Besson's 1994 film is a crime thriller about Léon, a highly skilled hitman, and Mathilda, the young girl he reluctantly takes under his protection after her family is murdered by corrupt DEA agent Norman Stansfield and his men.
But beneath the violence sits a useful lesson for CEOs dealing with problems that refuse to disappear.
Léon is extraordinarily effective at removing problems.
The trouble is that removing the problem in front of you is not necessarily the same as changing the system that created it.
Léon Is Brilliant at the Wrong Level
Léon operates with remarkable competence.
Give him a target and he can deal with it.
There is something seductive about that kind of capability inside organisations too.
A major customer complains, so an executive intervenes.
A project goes off track, so the best programme manager is parachuted in.
Costs blow out, so a turnaround specialist arrives.
A business unit underperforms, so its leader is replaced.
An operational failure occurs, so the responsible employee is removed.
Problem gone.
Except sometimes it isn't.
Because the organisation has solved the problem at the level where it became visible rather than the level where it was created.
That is classic karamawari: highly competent action producing less lasting progress than everyone expects.
Removing the Villain Does Not Remove the Conditions
Stansfield is clearly dangerous. Removing him matters.
But the film also shows something larger around him: authority, corruption, fear, secrecy, power and people who participate in or tolerate what is happening.
That distinction matters enormously in business.
CEOs frequently encounter organisational versions of "the villain".
The difficult executive.
The incompetent manager.
The troublesome supplier.
The failed technology platform.
The problematic process.
The consultant who got it wrong.
Sometimes those things genuinely need to go.
But there is a dangerous question that should follow:
What allowed this problem to become possible in the first place?
If an executive repeatedly concealed bad news, replacing that executive might be appropriate.
But what if the organisation punishes people who report bad news?
If a manager repeatedly made reckless decisions, removing them might be justified.
But what if incentives reward precisely the behaviour leadership now condemns?
If a project repeatedly missed milestones, changing the project leader may help.
But what if unrealistic commitments, fragmented decision rights and late escalation remain?
Change the person and the conditions can simply manufacture another version of the same problem.
Symptoms Come With Names. Conditions Usually Don't
This is one reason recurring problems are so difficult.
Visible problems are wonderfully convenient.
They have names.
People.
Projects.
Systems.
Incidents.
Numbers.
The deeper conditions behind them are harder to point at.
They might be an assumption nobody remembers making.
An incentive introduced five years ago.
A decision right that became ambiguous after a restructure.
A behaviour everyone privately dislikes but publicly tolerates.
A reporting process that gradually taught people to sanitise information.
An unofficial rule that senior executives must never be surprised.
These conditions rarely announce themselves as the cause.
Instead, they shape assumptions.
Assumptions shape behaviour.
Behaviour influences decisions.
Decisions eventually produce impacts.
Conditions → Assumptions → Behaviours → Decisions → Impacts
Leadership usually encounters the chain at the impact end.
And under pressure, it starts fixing backwards from there.
But not always far enough.
Mathilda Wants Revenge. Léon Understands Survival
There is another interesting tension in the film.
Mathilda understandably wants revenge. Her attention is fixed on the people responsible for what happened.
Léon is initially much more concerned with keeping her alive.
Those are different objectives.
CEOs face a similar distinction after serious failures.
When something goes badly wrong, organisations naturally become consumed with the event.
Who was responsible?
What failed?
What action should be taken?
How quickly can we demonstrate that the matter has been addressed?
Those questions are necessary.
But recurrence demands another one:
What needs to be different so that the organisation no longer keeps producing situations like this?
That changes the investigation.
Instead of merely identifying what happened, leadership examines why the decisions involved made sense to the people making them.
What information did they have?
What did they believe?
What pressures were operating?
What were they rewarded for?
What were they afraid of?
What had happened previously when somebody challenged the prevailing view?
Suddenly the problem becomes less about finding someone to eliminate and more about understanding the environment.
The Professional Can Become Part of the Problem
There is an uncomfortable lesson for CEOs here too.
Léon's extraordinary competence makes him useful because the world around him is dysfunctional.
Organisations create their own versions of Léon.
The executive who can always rescue the customer.
The engineer who can fix the system at 2am.
The manager who knows how to navigate every broken process.
The CFO who personally reconciles the numbers before the board meeting.
These people become indispensable.
And that should sometimes worry you.
Because repeated heroics can allow broken conditions to survive.
Every successful rescue reduces the immediate pressure to redesign the system that made rescuing necessary.
Competence becomes camouflage.
The organisation congratulates the hero while quietly preserving the need for one.
Stop Hiring Better Hitmen
When a recurring problem has survived several competent attempts to eliminate it, the next step should not automatically be a stronger intervention.
More expertise.
More governance.
More technology.
Another restructure.
Another executive replacement.
Another transformation programme.
Before spending again, ask what remained unchanged through every previous attempt.
The answer may reveal why the problem keeps returning.
Léon teaches us that exceptional execution can remove almost anything placed directly in front of it.
Karamawari teaches us something harder.
The most expensive problems are often not the ones we cannot eliminate. They are the ones we repeatedly eliminate without ever changing what keeps creating them.
So when the problem your organisation has already "solved" appears yet again, do you really need a better professional to take another shot at it, or is it finally time to investigate the system that keeps producing the target?
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