Escaping the “People Problem” Trap

Imagine this:

You’ve been promoted to lead an underperforming team at work. On your second day, you discover:

• Janice doesn’t talk to Jude.

• Mwangi despises Yishra.

• Marie is as productive as a sloth on a drug high.

This confirms what you’ve heard from social media leadership gurus preach:

“All organisational problems are people problems.”

If your first instinct is to channel your inner Dr. Phil at these 'people problems',

STOP.

Focusing on people problems is like trying to bail out the Titanic with teaspoons. It's a black hole that'll suck you in faster than you can say 'team-building exercise.'

People Problems: Symptoms, Not Causes.

The Hamburger model was one of the mind-popping models I learnt during my Lean Six Sigma Black Belt training.

I had three, aha! moments in that room in Meriden:

1. Of course, you can’t succeed if you ignore people problems.

2. People problems arise from how they feel about the work.

3. Feelings only exist because of the other elements.

People problems only arise when individuals are working towards a common goal and they disagree over one of the following:

• disagree over the problem or opportunity.

• disagree over the goal.

• disagree over the priority.

• disagree over the plan to accomplish the goal.

• disagree over the roles each person plays in the plan.

Want to be an effective manager?

Resist the urge to obsess over people problems. Focus on process problems.

Here’s why (from the father of modern quality).

Let me demonstrate it to you.

The Process Roots of the Top 7 People Problems.

Here are the top 7 people problems and their impact on teams and organisations:

1. Poor communication and misalignment:
   (Makes you 4.5 times less likely to retain your best employees)

2. Low engagement:
   (Costs US companies $550 billion/yr in lost productivity.)

3. Incompetent leadership & management:
   (58% of people trust strangers more than their boss.)

4. Lack of accountability and ownership:
   (Makes your team 4 times less likely to be high-performing.)

5. Resistance to change and innovation:
   (Kills 75% of change efforts.)

6. Lack of diversity and inclusion:
   (Makes your team 45% less likely to succeed against diverse teams.)

7. Dysfunctional “politics”
   (I’ll leave this one as an workplace exercise for you)

Here’s how all the top seven (7) people problems can be traced to one or more of the 7 core processes that every organisation needs to function well.

Think about this:

What is the real problem when your sales team of work-hard, play-hard mid-twenties men can't seem to get their messaging right towards your customers (mostly 40 - 50-year-old women)?

• Poor communication and misalignment?

• Failure in the Recruitment & Onboarding process?

• Failure in the Learning & Development process?

Poor communication and misalignment are outcomes, not causes. Fix the processes.

How about when your budgeting season feels like a season of Game of Thrones as executives undermine each other's proposals and hoard information to gain an advantage? Which of these should you fix?

• The self-serving executives who won’t collaborate?

• The Strategy process’s ability to align departmental goals?

• The Performance Management process that rewards individual over collective success?

Dysfunctional politics is primarily an outcome, not a cause. Fix the processes.

How about this leadership favourite?

Your company's latest digital transformation initiative is meeting fierce resistance from long-time employees. Even though senior leadership loves it, staff are clinging to old systems and workflows, causing project delays and budget overruns. What do you fix?

• The staff’s attitude of resisting change?

• A failure of the digital transformation strategy?

• The dull training that has been mandated for everyone?

Resistance to change is an outcome, not a cause. Fix the processes

In almost every case, the root cause is a process problem, which manifests as a people problem that worsens the problem over time.

This is a classic example of dynamic complexity that requires systems thinking.

Embrace Processes to Empower the People.

People problems will ALWAYS exist, even in the most well-run team, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are outcomes, not causes.

The knee-jerk reaction to blaming organisational issues on "people problems" is an example of the fundamental attribution error. It’s simplistic, counterproductive and disempowering.

But you can change this.

If every time you see a people problem, you ask

1. “What is the immediate activity causing this people problem?” e.g.

2. “What process is this activity part of?”

For example:

People problem: High turnover in the sales department.

• Immediate causal activity: failure to meet sales targets

• Underlying process: the Performance Management process

• Related processes: the sales & marketing processes.

People problem: Resistance to change to new CRM

• Immediate causal activity: low completion rate for online CRM training.

• Underlying process: Change Management process.

• Related processes: Learning & Development process.

6 Things You Can Do Today As A Manager.

Step 1: Identify all processes that make your team work.

Use the SIPPR canvas for structured guidance. Think of your team or company as a set of interconnected processes that transform inputs using staff skills into value for an external customer.

Step 2: Verify the desired outcomes.

• What benefits do external customers want?

• What benefits do the employees doing the work want?

• What benefits do the peers whose inputs you need want?

• What benefits do the peers who use your team’s outputs want?

You instantly know that you will have “people” problems when these desired outcomes aren’t met, so you can be proactive about meeting or mitigating them if they can’t.

Step 3: Improve iteratively.

Keep trying whatever process activities give the best desired outcomes. The first iteration of the process must always satisfy the external customer outcomes, then progressively all the other stakeholders.

Step 4: Build training & coaching plans on processes.

• what are good and bad examples of each process step?

• what skills does one need to execute each process step well?

• what coaching (beyond training) does one need to become proficient?

Step 5: Co-create a team contract.

Spell out how you’ll work together. I use the Ways of Working canvas; here’s one I co-created with my team.

Step 6 | Dig into your 1:1 meetings.

It’s the most critical activity that helps you spot people’s problems before they become ugly.

"The role of management,” said Edwards Deming “, is to change the process rather than badgering individuals to do better."

That’s how elite managers solve people problems.

Until next time ... be BRILLIANT! 💎

Mukom | @perfexcellent