Why the Same Workplace Problems Keep Coming Back
Updated: Nov 6
By Paul Gerhardt, PhD, management professor, leadership author, and host of The Better Workplace.
Recurring workplace problems need two responses: a repair that gets today's work moving and an improvement that addresses why the interruption keeps happening. Trace one repeated problem with the people doing the work, test a small change, and review the evidence.
If you have had the same conversation with your team three times, it may be time to ask a different question.
You explained the expectation. You sent the reminder. You stepped in when things went wrong. For a few days, everything looked better. Then the missed deadline, incomplete handoff, or customer complaint showed up again.
That can wear a manager down. It can wear employees down, too, especially when they are trying to do good work and keep running into the same obstacles.
Here is the question I would start with: What keeps making this problem possible?
I spend a great deal of time teaching management and systems thinking. One distinction I want people to understand is the difference between getting through a problem today and changing the conditions that bring it back tomorrow. Both deserve our attention.
When the workaround becomes the way we work
Imagine a customer service team that regularly receives incomplete orders from sales. A supervisor notices the missing information, calls the salesperson, and gets the order moving again. The customer is helped. Everyone gets back to work.
But nobody changes what an order must include before it moves to the next person. On Friday, the supervisor makes the same calls again.
In this example, the supervisor's effort has become an unofficial part of the process. The organization depends on someone remembering to catch what the process allows through.
Tucker and Edmondson (2003) studied operational failures in hospitals and distinguished between first-order problem solving, which gets the immediate work moving, and second-order problem solving, which also addresses underlying causes. They found that capable employees often worked around obstacles without triggering organizational learning.
That study concerned hospitals. Applying its lesson to the order-handoff example is a management interpretation, not a finding about sales teams. Still, it gives us a useful question: After we get the work moving, who learns what went wrong?
Why working harder can leave less time to improve
A manager facing a backlog has an understandable reaction: put more effort into getting today's work finished. Process improvement can wait.
Then tomorrow arrives with another backlog.
Repenning and Sterman (2002) examined improvement efforts in one firm and developed a dynamic model showing how beliefs about poor performance, workplace conditions, and delays in improvement results can reinforce one another. Their work helps explain why a team can become stuck while people on both sides grow frustrated.
My practical takeaway is to protect some time for improvement while meeting immediate needs. Otherwise, the work of getting through today can keep consuming the time needed to make tomorrow easier.
Before concluding that employees need to care more, check the conditions. Are they waiting for approvals? Working from different versions of the instructions? Being pulled between competing priorities? Sometimes an employee needs coaching. Sometimes a process needs repair. You need enough information to tell the difference.
Ask the people who deal with the problem
The employee who fixes the same mistake every afternoon may know something that never appears in your weekly report.
You will learn more if that person can describe the problem without expecting an argument.
In a study of 51 manufacturing work teams, Edmondson (1999) found that team psychological safety was associated with learning behavior. The study supports a connection between the interpersonal environment and team learning; it does not establish that a single conversation will improve performance.
For a manager, a useful starting point might sound like this: "Walk me through what happened. Where did the work get stuck? What did you have to do to get it moving again?"
Listen before explaining. Ask what happened before assigning blame. You can hold people responsible for their choices while examining whether the way work is organized contributes to the difficulty.
A practical way to work on one recurring problem
You do not need to redesign your whole organization this week. Choose one problem that keeps taking time away from useful work.
1. Describe what keeps happening
Replace "Our communication is terrible" with something you can examine: "Three orders arrived without delivery details this week, and each one required another phone call." Use actual examples. Record the delay or rework when you can.
2. Trace what happened before the breakdown
Bring together the people who send and receive the work. Ask what information, materials, decisions, and time each person needs. Follow the handoff. A problem that shows up in one department may begin somewhere else.
3. Separate the immediate fix from the improvement
For our order example, calling sales helps the customer today. Requiring delivery details before an order moves forward is a possible improvement to test. Write down both actions so that completing the first does not cause everyone to forget the second.
4. Agree on a small test and a review date
Assign someone to coordinate the test, make sure that person has the authority and support needed, and agree on what you will look for. In the order example, the team could try one shared handoff checklist and track incomplete orders and follow-up calls for two weeks. Check whether the change creates extra work elsewhere.
5. Return to the evidence
Did the problem happen less often? Did employees spend less time correcting it? Did the customer experience improve? If the results are mixed, ask what you missed. A test that needs adjustment can still teach you something useful.
Give the improvement time to work
A new procedure may initially feel slower because people are learning it. That is a reason to pay attention to the results, not to assume either success or failure after one difficult day.
Ask your team what they are noticing. Keep expectations clear. Follow through on the review you promised. If employees take the time to explain a problem and nothing happens afterward, they have little reason to believe the next conversation will be different.
I appreciate people who step in when something goes wrong. We also need to make room for people to prevent the next interruption. That work is easy to overlook because, when it succeeds, there may be no emergency for everyone to notice.
Choose one thing to change this week
At your next team meeting, ask: "What problem did we work around this week that we have worked around before?"
Pick one answer. Learn how it happens. Agree on a small change and a date to check the results. Keep the discussion close to the work, and give the people doing it a voice.
Better workplaces begin with the choices we make every day. Sometimes the most useful choice is to stop repeating the reminder long enough to understand why it is still needed.
What recurring problem would give your team the most time back if you could prevent it?
Research and references
The practical exercise and order-handoff example above are my application of the research, not a tested intervention from these studies. The studies examined specific organizational settings, so use their findings as a guide for inquiry rather than a guarantee of results.
A reusable problem-improvement record
Use a short record to keep the repair and the improvement separate:
Recurring event: [what happened and how often].
Immediate repair: [what kept the work moving today].
Possible contributing condition: [what needs investigation].
Small test: [one change, owner, and review date].
Evidence: [recurrence, waiting time, rework, and effects elsewhere].
Treat a possible cause as a question until the evidence supports it. Keep personal performance information out of a shared process-improvement record.
Paul Gerhardt, PhD, teaches management and leadership with a practical commitment to helping people build better workplaces. The examples and exercises in this article are teaching illustrations, unless identified as research findings.
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