When Did This Become Normal?

Most leaders would respond quickly if five customers complained about the same thing in one week.

It's much harder to recognize the same problem when those complaints happen over six months.

The first one feels unusual. The second has a reasonable explanation. By the third, the team has figured out how to handle it. Eventually, everyone knows what to do when it happens.

Somewhere along the way, the problem becomes normal.

I see this happen with much more than customer complaints. A manager spends a little more time each week answering questions that employees should be able to answer themselves. A process requires an extra workaround. One person becomes the unofficial source for information. A report needs to be double-checked because no one completely trusts the data. The owner gets pulled into a few decisions that shouldn't really require their involvement.

Individually, none of those things may seem significant enough to address.

So the organization adapts.

That's often what good people do. They find a way to keep the work moving. Managers fill the gaps. Employees develop workarounds. Leaders step in when necessary. The immediate problem gets solved, which makes it easier to overlook the fact that it keeps needing to be solved.

Over time, the workaround can become so familiar that we stop seeing the condition that created it.

This is why I think one of the most useful things leaders can occasionally do is look at the business as though they haven't been living in it every day.

What would seem strange to someone new?

Would they wonder why three people have to check something before it can move forward? Why everyone asks the same employee for answers? Why a manager has to manually correct the same issue every week? Why employees keep a separate spreadsheet because they don't trust the system? Why the owner is still approving something that happens twenty times a month?

Those questions aren't meant to suggest that every inconvenience deserves a new process. Businesses are imperfect, and sometimes a workaround is exactly the right answer.

The opportunity is to distinguish between an occasional exception and something the organization has quietly learned to accommodate.

A practical place to start is with the things your team says "always" about.

• "We always have to double-check that."
• "She always knows where to find it."
• "We always have to remind them."
• "That always gets kicked back."
• "I always have to approve those."

When you hear language like that, don't immediately fix the individual problem. Ask how long it has been happening, how often it happens, who has learned to compensate for it, and what would happen if they stopped.

You may discover that the issue isn't new at all.

Sometimes the clearest sign that an operational problem deserves attention is how normal it has become.