One of the most common leadership traps I see is this: treating recurring issues as isolated incidents.
Something goes wrong. We jump in. We correct it. We patch it. We spend time, energy, and attention on the immediate mess.
Then it happens again…. and again.
At some point, it’s worth asking a harder question: are we solving the problem… or just becoming highly skilled at managing the symptoms?
The Hidden Cost of “Fixing It”
Here’s what bothers me about symptom-solving: it consumes precious leadership bandwidth on problems that could often be avoided altogether.
Worse, it can create the illusion of competence. A leader appears decisive and responsive. The team sees action. Everyone feels like something is being handled.
But if the same issue keeps returning, “handling it” isn’t the win we think it is.
Sometimes we’re not solving the problem. We’re just normalizing it.
The Leader’s Role Is Often Part of the Problem
Another reason this trap matters: it often fails to recognize the leader’s own role in creating the situation. For example, a manager spends hours and hours correcting an employee’s mistakes. They coach. They document. They write them up. Eventually, they fire the employee. And yes, sometimes that is the right outcome. The employee wasn’t doing the work correctly.
It’s easy to give the manager credit for “addressing the issue.”
But there’s a deeper question: could the situation have been avoided in the first place?
- Maybe the job wasn’t designed well.
- Maybe the manager didn’t define the skills required to succeed.
- Maybe the hiring process didn’t screen for the right capabilities.
- Maybe training was too thin, too late, or inconsistent.
In other words, the employee may have been the symptom, not the root cause.
Leaders don’t just manage performance. They design the conditions where performance is likely — or unlikely.
Why We Keep Doing This
It’s not hard to understand why we default to symptom-solving. The “incident” is visible. It’s urgent. It’s measurable. It feels like leadership to respond quickly.
Going upstream feels slower. Less satisfying. Sometimes it even feels like avoiding the real problem, when in fact it’s the opposite.
I’ve been reading Upstream by Chip Heath, and one of the themes that stuck with me is how easy it is to build an entire organization around rescue — while neglecting prevention. We can become excellent at catching problems after they happen, while barely investing in reducing the probability they happen at all.
That’s true in business, and it’s true in government.
The Regulatory Version of the Same Trap
I see this in federal regulations too.
Regulators can invest massive time in enforcement: catching mistakes, penalizing errors, increasing oversight. Again, some of that is necessary. Accountability matters.
But sometimes the deeper opportunity is upstream: addressing the underlying conditions that make errors likely in the first place.
If the rules are overly complex, inconsistently applied, or hard to interpret, mistakes will be plentiful. You can “catch” a lot of them. You can punish some of them. You can tighten controls.
Or you can ask: what could be changed so fewer people fall into the ditch to begin with?
The Move I’m Trying to Make
Personally, I’m trying to step back more and cultivate a “shoshin” mindset — a beginner’s mind. Not naïve. Not uninformed. Just willing to ask “why” more times than feels comfortable.
It stacks on top of “love the problem,” but goes upstream even further. Instead of “How do we fix this?”, I’m trying to ask:
- “Why does this keep happening?”
- “What is the system producing?”
- “What role did we play, intentionally or unintentionally?”
- “If we solved this upstream, what would change downstream?”
Symptom-solving has its place. Sometimes you have to triage. Sometimes you have to rescue.
But leadership maturity shows up in what happens next: whether we keep living in rescue mode, or we take responsibility for prevention. Because when the same problem keeps returning, the lesson is usually clear:
We’re solving something.
It’s just not the right something.
