Why smart leaders get stuck.

If you’re a senior leader, you are likely to be good at solving technical problems.

However, what's more common in my work is adaptive challenges. These can be described as a complex problem that you can’t solve by applying your existing knowledge or technical solutions. They require you to make a change in your beliefs, behaviours, and ways of working.

In other words, they are strategic, cultural and multifaceted in nature, requiring you to make both individual and systems change.

But when the challenges are mounting and the pressure is on, it's hard to see, articulate and resolve adaptive challenges on your own. There's always something more urgent, someone who needs answers, or more pressing work to do.

So, things accumulate. Until the frustration, flatness, or fatigue gets painful enough for you to want to do something about it.

When I sit down with a CEO or senior leader for the first time, the challenges they initially present are rarely the core issue. Rather, they are the pain points that are getting in the way, or the 'technical' challenges.

Here’s an example using the 5-whys, originated from Sakichi Toyoda:

"I want to leave my role." Why?

"I'm exhausted." Why?

"I'm doing too much." Why?

"I don't trust my team to handle it." Why?

"I haven't got the right people" Why?

"Our organisation has evolved, but the team hasn't….But that's something I can work on"

That's a very different conversation to resignation. Hope and a plan forward enters the equation.

Most senior leaders I work with don’t have the ‘strategic space’ to do this kind of thinking. And that's what changes when you have a thinking partner. It’s where real growth and resolution of the right problem occurs.

But in the absence of that, if you're in the middle of something you can't quite untangle, try the ‘5 Whys’.

The answer that stops you from the next ‘why?’ is usually a good place to start.