Time Wasted on Unsolved Problems

John opened a desk drawer to grab a pen. The drawer stuck. Jammed. So he did what he always did: jiggle it, shake it, force it open. This went on for years. Every single day. His colleague Dean watched him struggle and finally asked: "How long has this been a problem?" "Two years," John said. "I've been bothered by it every single day." Dean asked: "How long would it take to fix?" John fixed it right then. Two minutes. Two years of frustration. Two minutes to solve. Why do we tolerate this? Because on any given day, managing a problem takes less time than solving it. Thirty seconds of jiggling is faster than two minutes of fixing. So we live with it. We manage it. We accept the daily friction as normal. But compound it over years and suddenly you're living a life designed around broken things. A client was chronically late to meetings. Every important meeting triggered anxiety. She'd worry about being late, not focus on the work. Until she spent two minutes setting calendar reminders for five minutes before each meeting. Two minutes. Gone were the daily anxiety that cost her hundreds of hours. Some tasks that seem "not worth it" in the moment save you hundreds of times the time over the long run. Ask yourself: • What problem irritates me repeatedly? • What's the total cost of managing that over several years? • What's one small action I can take right now to solve it? The goal: Find the most annoying thing that can be solved in the least amount of time. You'll be shocked what changes. From Effortless pg.196

I timed it yesterday: A leadership team spent 47 minutes "solving" the same issue they've tackled in every meeting for the past 4 months. Sound familiar? They identified symptoms, not causes. Everyone had opinions, few had solutions. They created action items no one completed. The problem returned, slightly repackaged. This isn't just inefficient. It's the silent killer of growing businesses. After implementing EOS with 500+ entrepreneurial companies over 15 years, I've found teams waste up to 68% of their meeting time on recurring issues that never get solved at the root. The difference between teams that solve issues once and teams stuck in the loop isn't intelligence. It's methodology. Enter the Issues Solving Track - the EOS tool that transforms how leadership teams attack problems: 1. IDENTIFY the real issue Most teams get this wrong. They discuss symptoms, not causes. Try this instead: → Write the issue as one clear sentence → Ask "Why is this happening?" three times → Determine if it's a people issue, process breakdown, or communication gap A manufacturing client kept "solving" quality problems until they properly identified the real issue: unclear quality standards, not lazy employees. 2. DISCUSS with discipline The discussion phase isn't: → A platform for the loudest voice → A place for tangents and war stories → A political positioning exercise It is: → A focused examination of relevant facts → A space for diverse perspectives → A way to challenge assumptions respectfully The best teams have a designated facilitator who keeps discussion on track and ensures every voice contributes. 3. SOLVE completely The only reason to discuss an issue is to solve it. When you've reached clarity, document: → A specific action step → One person accountable (not a department) → A concrete due date (not "ASAP" or "ongoing") Then move on. No revisiting. No second-guessing. A software company I work with was averaging 3.5 hours in weekly leadership meetings. After implementing the Issues Solving Track, they cut meeting time to 90 minutes while solving twice as many issues. The best businesses aren't the ones without problems. They're the ones that solve problems at the root. Want to implement the Issues Solving Track in your business? Use the process below 👇

Average ticket resolution time dropped 40% in one quarter. Leadership celebrated. Customer satisfaction dropped 15% in the same period. Nobody connected the two until I asked. The company had introduced a resolution time target for support tickets. Reasonable intent: customers shouldn't wait days. The metric tracked time from creation to "resolved" status. Engineers responded rationally. Resolved faster. Closed earlier. Dashboard loved it. The problem: "resolved" and "solved" aren't the same thing. A customer reports a recurring sync failure. Engineer applies a config change that clears the symptom, marks it resolved. Forty-eight hours later, same customer, same problem, new ticket number. The metric counts two resolved tickets with excellent response times. The actual cause, a connection pooling issue needing architectural work, never gets fixed because fixing it takes a week and craters that engineer's numbers. Same dynamic across the queue. Engineers treating symptoms and closing tickets instead of diagnosing root causes. Not because they didn't know the difference. Because the system punished depth and rewarded speed. One engineer crystallized it: "I know what's wrong with the sync service. Fixing it takes five days. In five days of closing symptom tickets, I resolve fifteen issues and my numbers look great. Fix the root cause, I close one ticket in five days and get flagged." Every engineer on the team had done the same math. The customer felt the difference. Their problem kept returning. Each time, someone applied a quick fix and closed the ticket. Each time, their confidence in the product eroded. The dashboard showed fast resolution. The customer experienced a company that couldn't actually fix their problem. Goodhart's Law in real time. When a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure. Resolution time was supposed to measure how well problems got solved. Once it became a target, it measured how quickly tickets got closed. Different activities entirely. We split the metric. Resolution time for quick fixes. A separate category for root cause investigations with different expectations. Engineers who spent a week eliminating twenty recurring tickets got credit for the elimination, not penalized for the duration. Within two quarters, ticket volume dropped 30%. Not faster resolution. Actual solving. Problems that recurred monthly stopped recurring. Customers who'd been filing the same ticket every few weeks went quiet. The good kind of quiet. Old metric said the team got worse. Fewer tickets resolved. Longer times. New metric told the truth: problems were actually going away. The team was performing better than ever. Resolution is a status change. Solving is a state change. Your metrics can't tell the difference. Your customers can. ♻️ Repost if you've watched a metric improve while the underlying problem got worse ➕ Follow me (Phillip R. Kennedy) for engineering leadership that measures outcomes, not activity

The VP of Engineering walked into the CEO's office with a spreadsheet. "We're spending $2.3 million annually on internal data requests." The CEO looked confused. "That's not on our P&L." They had been tracking it for months. - Engineers pulling reports for executives. - Product managers building one-off dashboards. - Designers creating charts for board meetings. None of it showed up in the budget. All of it was burning cash. "Show me the math," the CEO said. She opened her laptop: - 12 engineers at $180K: 15% of time on data requests - 8 PMs at $150K: 20% of time building dashboards - 4 designers at $120K: 10% of time on charts "We're accidentally running a data agency inside our product company." The CEO leaned back. "How much would it cost to fix this?" "Two analysts at $120K each. Self-service tools for $50K annually." "Total cost: $290K." The silence stretched. "We're spending $2.3 million to avoid spending $290K?" She nodded. The CEO closed his laptop. "What do you need to implement this?" Three months later, the culture had shifted. Leaders stopped asking for reports they didn't really need. Engineers were back to building products. The company was no longer subsidizing executive curiosity  with million-dollar talent. The invisible expense became visible. Once leadership saw the opportunity cost, behavior changed immediately. Sometimes the most expensive problems are the ones that don't show up on the P&L.

MAKE SURE YOU’RE SOLVING YOUR PROBLEMS, NOT JUST MITIGATING THEM. Most leaders don’t fail because they ignore problems, They fail because they keep managing them instead of resolving them. They patch symptoms, apply quick fixes, & call it progress, while building pressure beneath the surface. And it makes sense, right? Because most people want the easy way out & it’s much easier to apply a bandage than to heal a wound. But the problem is that what stays unhealed eventually infects everything around it, It’s what I call “THE BANDAID TRAP" It’s the illusion of progress that hides the erosion of clarity, confidence, & culture. And in business, it impacts alignment, execution, & results. In fact, unresolved issues drain up to 40% of your brain’s decision-making capacity, eroding clarity, draining energy, & blurring focus. And the cost is staggering: → U.S. businesses lose $350 billion every year to unresolved workplace issues. → 68% of executives admit to revisiting the same recurring issues multiple times a year. → Companies that rely on short-term fixes spend up to 40% more time firefighting rather than innovating. → Absenteeism tied to poor culture costs $225 billion annually. → Unproductive meetings waste up to $100 million per year in large companies. → Turnover from unresolved friction costs 50% to 200% of an employee’s annual salary. Instead of falling into this trap, Here’s HOW I HELP TOP LEADERS BREAK THE CYCLE & ACTUALLY SOLVE THEIR PROBLEMS: → DIAGNOSE, DON’T DISGUISE. Slow down long enough to identify the root cause, not just the visible effect. Trace patterns back to process, communication, or leadership gaps. → CHALLENGE AUTOMATIC RESPONSES. When your instinct says “move faster,” pause & ask, “what’s creating this recurring friction?” Precision always outperforms speed. → SYSTEMATIZE THE SOLUTION. Once you resolve an issue, lock it into structure. Create a standard, checklist, or communication loop that makes the problem impossible to repeat. → INTEGRATE REFLECTION TIME. Protect an hour each week to review: “What problems am I solving versus what patterns am I repeating?” Strategic reflection separates reactive managers from intentional leaders. → BUILD PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY. Empower your team to surface root causes without fear. Organizations with open communication resolve operational issues 30% faster. High performance leadership is about deliberate precision. Quick fixes that bring short-term ease are the enemy of sustained excellence. True leadership demands the courage to dig deeper, confront what is uncomfortable, & build systems that prevent history from repeating itself. Your company, your energy, & your future depend on it. The choice is yours… You can manage the same problem a hundred times or solve it once. Your decision will determine whether you leave a trail of exhaustion or a legacy of excellence. I’m curious… ~Are you patching at the surface or solving at the root? #leadership #strategy #success

𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗯𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗮 𝗶𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗯𝗹𝘆 𝘄𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴. And you'll defend it brilliantly. I've watched executives build entire strategies around assumptions they never tested. The pattern is always the same: • Someone flags an issue. • The leader's mind races to a solution. • A plan emerges: clean, logical, decisive. Everyone nods. The meeting ends. Six months later, nothing's changed. Here's what happened: 𝟭. 𝗪𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗱𝗲𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 "Sales are down" isn't a problem definition. It might be a symptom. Without defining the problem, we won't get to the root cause. Without finding the root cause, we will just create short-term "fixes" that won't solve the problem. 𝟮. 𝗪𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗿𝗼𝗼𝗺 Real problems don't live in PowerPoint. They live at Gemba - where the real work happens. If you haven't stood beside the people doing the work, listened to their reality, and seen what they see, you're solving from a distance. Distance breeds elegant theories. Proximity breeds truth. 𝟯. 𝗪𝗲 𝗳𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗶𝗻 𝗹𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗮 The smartest person in the room is rarely in the room. It's the operator who's run that machine for eight years. The experienced sales colleague in the field who hears the same complaint daily. The engineer who's been working around a broken process for months. Leaders who bypass this expertise don't just waste time. They waste trust. Toyota taught me something painful early in my career: ✅ Your job as a leader isn't to have the answer. ✅ Your job is to frame the question so clearly that the people closest to the work can solve it. That requires humility. And a quiet ego, by the way 😉 It requires going to Gemba where the problem lives. It requires trusting that someone else might see what you can't. Most executives resist this because it feels slow. But "𝑠𝑙𝑜𝑤 𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑡, 𝑓𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑠ℎ" beats "𝑓𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛, 𝑓𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑓𝑖𝑥 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑛𝑜 𝑠𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛, 𝑛𝑜 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑙𝑡" every single time. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘀𝗻'𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀. 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿𝘀 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝗮 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺 𝗮𝗻𝘀𝘄𝗲𝗿. 𝗣.𝗦. When did you last go to the Gemba before making a big decision? Drop a number: how many days ago? ♻️ Repost if your best idea turned out to be wrong. Image by Michael Ballé (thank you 🙏)

"We're too busy to improve!" The most expensive lie in business. I hear this excuse everywhere: - Coffee shops too busy to fix their slow ordering system - Restaurants too busy to train staff properly   - Offices too busy to organize their filing systems - Factories too busy to eliminate waste Here's the uncomfortable truth: Being too busy to improve is exactly why you're too busy. Let me break this down: Your current chaos is self-created. ↳ Firefighting the same problems weekly ↳ Redoing work because it wasn't done right ↳ Searching for things that should be organized ↳ Waiting for decisions that could be automated You're stuck in a hamster wheel of inefficiency. The brutal math: Time spent improving = 10x time saved later Time avoiding improvement = Same problems forever Here's how the trap works: Week 1: "Too busy to organize, we'll do it next month" Week 2: Waste 2 hours daily searching for stuff Week 3: Same searches, same waste, same stress Week 4: "Still too busy for improvements..." Result: 56 hours wasted that could have been eliminated with 4 hours of smart work. The reality check: Busy teams need improvement MORE, not less. Start microscopic: ↳ 15 minutes to identify your biggest time drain ↳ 15 minutes to think of solutions   ↳ 15 minutes to test the easiest fix I've seen 15-minute improvements save hours daily. Real example: Team spent 30 minutes daily hunting for supplies. Invested 2 hours creating a simple organization system. Now saves 2.5 hours daily. ROI: 2 hours invested = 625 hours saved annually. The question isn't "When will we have time to improve?" The question is "How can we afford not to improve?" Every day you postpone fixing problems is another day of: → Wasted time → Accumulated frustration   → Missed opportunities → Burning out your best people My challenge to you: Pick ONE thing that wastes your time daily. Spend 15 minutes fixing it today. Count the time you save tomorrow. Because the people who are "too busy to improve" are usually drowning in problems that improvement would solve. What's eating up most of your time right now?

Your team isn’t slow. They’re stuck in friction. You see it daily. Tasks take longer than expected. Customers wait. Your team asks the same questions again and again…. They’re working hard. The system isn’t. Here’s what’s actually happening. → People are searching instead of serving. They’re guessing instead of following a clear path. They’re fixing problems that should never exist. That friction quietly drains your business. Ten minutes lost here. Fifteen minutes there. Multiply that across your team and your week is gone. → You don’t fix this by pushing performance. → You fix it by REMOVING obstacles. Start here. ↳ Walk the customer journey from first contact to final delivery. ↳ Write down every moment where someone pauses, waits, or asks for help. ↳ Then talk to your team. ↳ Ask one question: “Where do you lose the most time each day?” You’ll hear the same themes: Searching for information. Unclear ownership. Missing documentation. Too many handoffs… Pick one. Not all friction is EQUAL. → Solve the problem costing the most minutes per day. → Create a clear system: One owner One location One way to do it ✅ When friction disappears, SPEED shows up. ✅ Your team moves with confidence. ✅ Mistakes drop. ✅ Customers feel the difference immediately. ✅ Leadership starts to feel LIGHTER because you’re no longer the bottleneck. → What process in your business wastes the most time right now? Share it in the comments and I’ll help you break it down during a LinkedIn Systems Jam Session. I help healthcare and eldercare leaders identify time-draining friction, install practical systems, and build teams that operate smoothly without constant oversight. #systems #leadership #business #strategy #ProcessImprovement