Why Do Organisational Fixes Create New Problems?
Imagine a plumber repairing a leak. He seals the crack, restores the water supply, and leaves the wall sound. Days later, damp appears elsewhere, where redirected water has found a weakness. The repair worked where it was made, but the system responded somewhere else.
The plumber keeps fixing each new leak without asking why water keeps appearing. Each repair looks successful, yet the building becomes harder to maintain. The faults move, while their source remains untouched. This is exactly what happens in organisations when fixing one problem changes conditions elsewhere.
When Fixes Look Like Solutions
We assume that a problem has a location, and correcting it will restore normality. If a process fails, we redesign it; if performance drops, we add controls. The immediate result may be encouraging, and the original difficulty may disappear. But removing a visible problem does not necessarily remove what produced it.
An approval process may reduce errors while slowing decisions elsewhere. A cost reduction may improve one function’s figures while burdening another. Neither is necessarily a poor decision. Local improvement can alter the conditions on which other parts depend.
The Problem Beneath the Problem
Organisations are interconnected, although structures encourage people to see separate responsibilities. A change in one area alters workloads and behaviour elsewhere. Its effects may emerge far from the intervention. A fix can travel through an organisation long after the decision has been made.
People respond to new conditions by introducing further adjustments. Each addresses a difficulty created or exposed by an earlier one. A straightforward repair becomes a chain of compensations, each reasonable in its own context. The organisation gradually adapts to the consequences of its own solutions.
When Solutions Become the System
The organisation may no longer be dealing with its original difficulty, but with the accumulated effects of attempts to resolve it. Visible problems keep changing, while the underlying pattern remains untouched. The fixes themselves have become part of the problem. The organisation is fixing symptoms generated by its previous fixes.
Sub-Surface Strategy™ examines the relationships and conditions beneath a problem. An intervention cannot be judged solely by what it corrects at the point of action. Its wider consequences matter equally. The real test of a fix is what happens to the whole organisation after it succeeds.
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