When Should Issues Rise to the Top?
Colin Powell, the former four-star general, statesman and US Secretary of State, proposed: “Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.”
But is that right?
The answer is a definite maybe. It depends on the reasons.
The Best Level for Dealing with Problems
To what level should problems be raised?
Some organisations state that their people have the authority and responsibility to deal with everything. But that is abdication, not delegation: there are some that need to rise up the hierarchy for diverse reasons, including:
The issue affects more aspects of the organisation than the employee is responsible for: these need the buy-in of the other divisions or departments.
The issue looks like the tip of an iceberg. Big problems often manifest themselves as relatively minor issues at first, but these are just the first symptoms. As with any disease, the causes need curing, not the symptoms; by all means deal with those symptoms but not to the extent of masking the cause.
The issue keeps recurring: this usually suggests that only symptoms have been treated; the cause is likely to be inadequacies of the system, or even policy or strategy – both of which need higher authority to make the appropriate changes.
Broader buy-in is needed: if the solution is dealt with at too low a level, then others who may encounter it may not have learned from the original resolutions if these have not obtained the blessing of senior management, and then been rolled down the organisation again as new working methods.
The people or organisations raising the issues are too important: to keep these onside, the flattery of a more senior person responding promptly may help build the relationship.
The front-line person was unable to resolve it at the first time of asking, in which case it should be escalated. This can be the case when the issue is purely misunderstanding by the originator, such as false expectations of what the organisation can and cannot do.
When Seeing Fewer Problems is Failure
Certainly he is right if people are reluctant to bring their problems to the boss for fear of the consequences. There are many bad reasons why people would not want to raise their problems to the most appropriate level to solve them. Examples of these include:
Shoot the messenger: punishing those who raise the issue as though they had caused it. Even if they have, then the fact that they raised it honestly should be considered a mitigation, and an indication that they have learned from their mistakes.
Blaming them for not having solved it before raising it: a subset of the “shoot the messenger” reason.
Tetchiness, or expressing that the problem is an unwanted distraction for those who are too busy or too important to get involved: another subset of shooting the messenger.
Being associated with bad news: if most problems are elevated by a few people, then those people begin to be seen as bad news themselves.
Blaming those who don’t bring the solution too: many organisations pride themselves on training their staff (quite correctly) to bring suggested solutions together with the problems. But sometimes those staff cannot offer a solution, or offer the wrong one, maybe because they don’t have the training, experience or breadth of understanding: these are not culpable matters, but raining opportunities.
Senior people being too difficult to get hold of, which means that problems fester, grow and spread rather than being solved.
Senior people being intolerant of bad news, with the same result.
Relevant people refusing to take on the issue because it was raised outside their remit or department, and not “through the proper channels” of escalation to the highest common manager. After all, not every IT problem should be raised to the CEO just because the CEO is the only person over both the IT department and the department in which the glitch is found.
When Seeing Fewer Problems is Success
Paradoxically, a reduced flow of issues reaching the top can be a strong indicator of success. If a leader cultivates independent thought and delegated problem-solving capabilities and authority amongst their subordinates, then this will reduce numbers of upwardly escalated difficulties. This reduction then reflects a leader's effective cultivation of their team rather than a failure of confidence or care. Such empowerment fosters organisational resilience and agility, preventing the bottlenecking observed in less effective structures. It also ensures the development of future leaders.
The Joy of Problems
Each problem should be seen as a way to improve, both personally and organisationally. The cliché is correct: every problem is an opportunity. Services can be refined or added; products can evolve; systems can be improved; people can be trained. Without confronting problems, however small, the organisation will become stagnant, and surpassed by its competitors or even its customers.
In a 1981 academic research paper, Michael A. McCollough and Sundar G. Bharadwaj identified what they termed the "Service Recovery Paradox", which was re-phrased by Christopher Hart, James Heskett, and Earl Sasser in a famous 1990 Harvard Business Review article titled "The Profitable Art of Service Recovery" as::
A good recovery can turn angry, frustrated customers into loyal ones. It can, in fact, create more goodwill than if things had gone right in the first place.
Solving problems excellently is therefore a lasting source of competitive advantage, and should be a focus of any management team that strives for the excellence of their operation.
This does not only apply to customers’ or clients’ problems, but also to those found internally. I recall two businesses in which the staff constantly grumbled about what was wrong, and were quite disheartened about it. Yet when I spoke with customers and potential customers, I could see that these businesses were among the better ones in the field. So part of the task of sales and marketing should be to inform the organisation frankly about how well or badly they compare with the market: not just the direct market, but any others who may take customers or clients from them with competing products or services; such as smart phones competing with cameras. In these two businesses I was able to re-frame their grumbling as: “What I see from outside is that you’re among the best in the field; but your complaints are really great because they show how we can keep improving, and maintain or even improve our competitive position”.
Failing Organisations are Full of Essential People
Critically, an environment where all 'essential' problems invariably land on the leader’s desk can be a hallmark of a struggling enterprise, hindering both current operational efficiency and future strategic progress. The leader becomes the linchpin, gatekeeper, micro-manager, and the single point of vulnerability of the entire organisation.
Indeed, throughout my career I have observed that failing organisations are full of essential people: when they are no longer around, or performing sub-optimally, or overloaded with work, then the business stutters and even fails. None should be essential; all organisations need people and systems that can work without them. This involves many or all of resilient systems, flexible processes, succession plans, ongoing training, delegation without abdication, nurturing environments and active addressing of issues as they arise.
Conclusion – True Leadership
So problems need to be dealt with at the appropriate level. Often that is at the lowest level, sometimes above, and sometimes a mix of the two: some aspects at each.
True leadership sees problems as springboards for greater success. Such leadership transcends mere problem-solving, important though that remains: more important is the strategic development of a self-sufficient team capable of navigating challenges autonomously, thereby enabling sustained organisational growth and leadership succession.
About the Author
Mark Howitt is an energy, innovation and business consultant. He is a United Nations (UNECE) expert advisor on energy transition technologies, economics, regulation and politics – invitation here. He is also a member of the UK advisory team to the IEA (International Energy Agency), member of the Energy Storage Steering Group of the Renewable Energy Association, frequent consultee to the British energy ministry, regulator and National Grid, and expert speaker at many conferences. He is a serial inventor and implementer of strategies, business cases, technologies and services, and a serial entrepreneur. He was inventor, Chief Technical Officer and a founding director of both Cleanergi and Storelectric, and previously created three new and successful businesses (in both services and factory overhauls) for a company for which he worked. LinkedIn profile. He offers advisory and NED support, trading as Business Lift.
Mark has been involved in the instigation, development and implementation of strategies, business plans and change programmes in many industries, many with outstanding successes and others containing equally valuable lessons. While the successes inspire, the more challenging ones teach valuable lessons, indicating pitfalls that his clients therefore can avoid. He brings all these learnings to the service of those he advises, helping them to find innovative solutions and strategies at both business and technical levels.
A graduate in Physics with Electronics, he has 12 years’ management and innovation consultancy experience world-wide. In a rail multinational, Mark transformed processes and developed 3 profitable and successful businesses: in commercialising a non-destructive technology he had innovated, in logistics (innovating services) and in equipment overhaul. In electronics manufacturing, he developed and introduced to the markets 5 product ranges and helped 2 businesses expand into new markets.
About Cleanergi
Mark is also the Founder and CEO of Cleanergi (www.Cleanergi.com), which is developing transmission and distribution grid-scale energy storage to enable renewables to power grids reliably and cost-effectively: the world’s most cost-effective and widely implementable large-scale energy storage technology, turning locally generated renewable energy into dispatchable electricity, enabling renewables to power grids cheaply, efficiently, reliably and resiliently.
Its base technology is innovative adiabatic Compressed Air Energy Storage (CleanCAES™), the world’s most efficient, cost-effective, capable, flexible and widely implementable large-scale long-duration electricity storage technology. With zero emissions, it provides not only the balancing services need to keep the lights on, but also all the ancillary services needed to make electricity grids operable, reliable and resilient. Its CleanStart™ configuration is the only storage that can re-start grids from black-out, without having to reserve and forego operational capacity and revenues lest they be found to be empty when called upon.
Mark has also developed ways to integrate these with grids and off-takers, to “make the energy transition affordable, reliable and resilient” ™. Cleanergi’s CleanGrid™ enables renewables to be connected to the grid with grid connection sizes reduced by 50-85%, and grid reinforcement even more. Its CleanPark™ enables renewable generation to power energy-intensive industry, data centres, the hydrogen economy, Cleantech, decarbonising industry and other users with reduced or no grid connection.