5. Find the Root, Not the Scapegoat¶
I joined mid-year. The OKRs were already in place. Set at the start of the year by the existing team and the CEO, executed against for half a year before I arrived.
I read them. They made sense on the page. I started executing.
The team did not feel right.
Effort was uneven. The work people were doing felt loosely connected, sometimes unconnected, to the goals on the page. Meetings drifted. Energy was low.
The closest available diagnosis was the easy one. Low-effort team. Weak team. Lazy team.
That is the read most leaders take. Not because they are cruel. Because the team is in the room and the system is invisible. The team gives the leader somewhere to push. The system does not.
I almost took it.
I kept looking. Mostly because the pattern was too consistent across too many people for it to be the people.
That is what I found.
The OKRs had not been substantively updated in years. Each cycle, only one thing changed — the numbers, climbing each year. The strategy and priorities behind the OKRs had been frozen while the actual business situation had moved underneath them.
The team had never hit even 70% of the target. In any of those years.
The CEO had continued to demand 100%. Every year. Regardless.
Stack that across years and you do not get a lazy team. You get a trained one.
Trained that the goals were not real.
Trained that effort would not move the number.
Trained that the 100% demand was performative, not actual.
Trained that the OKRs were paperwork they were supposed to perform around, not direction they were supposed to chase.
The team was not unmotivated. The team was rationally responding to a system that had taught them, slowly and without anyone naming it, that motion did not connect to outcome.
My first read of the team was unfair. I would have blamed them if I had not kept looking. The thing that saved me from that was not insight. It was patience. The pattern was too consistent across the team for it to be the team.
That is the diagnostic from the first chapter. A noisy mind reaches for the closest target. The team is the closest target. The stale OKR system is invisible. Without the clear-mind move, the leader names what is in front of them and acts on it.
What I had on my hands was an isolated incident vs. repeated pattern problem. One person doing one thing once usually points to the person. The same kind of thing showing up across multiple people, across months and years, points to the system.
Across years. Across people who had cycled in and out. Same output.
The variable was not the people. The variable was what they all shared.
If I had named the team as the problem and started replacing or pressuring people, the next team would have produced the same result.
The fix had to live at the system level. Refresh the OKRs against current reality. Make the targets meaningful. Restore 100% as a real aspiration tied to real reasoning rather than a ritual demand.
Until that happened, no amount of team pressure would change the output.
The fix had two parts. The smaller part was at the OKR level itself — refreshing them, tying the targets to current reality instead of last year's numbers plus a percentage.
The larger part was at the team level. Goals that get handed to people produce delivery. Goals that get co-authored produce ownership. The team had been handed goals for years. So most of the work was rebuilding how they thought about goal-setting in the first place — what made a goal worth committing to, who got to write the measures, when we cannot hit this was a real signal versus an excuse.
The full system fix — collaborative goal-setting across the company — was not mine to call. The team-level fix was.
A leader fixes what is inside the leader's domain. The rest is a longer conversation.
The CEO is not the villain in that story. The system around the OKR is — the absence of a refresh process, the inheritance of stale goals, the cultural ritual of demanding 100% on numbers no one had re-examined. The CEO was inside that system, not its sole author. So was the team. So was I, the moment I joined.
Root-cause thinking that exempts the leader is incomplete. Root-cause thinking that hunts a person at the top is just blame in a different costume.
A different team. A different problem. Same diagnostic move, used in harder terrain.
I had set up a process loosely. On purpose. The design intent was creative latitude — the team was supposed to use the looseness as room to think, try, and shape the work.
Things were taking too long.
The process built for speed-with-creativity was producing slowness. Sometimes neither speed nor creativity.
Easy diagnosis again. The team is being slow. The team is not using the latitude well.
I almost took it. Again.
What I found by looking was one specific senior team member. He was the bottleneck.
He was more experienced than me in his domain. A developed, methodical, rigid working style — earned over a long career. Legitimately his.
He was applying his method into the latitude I had built. The looseness I had designed for creativity, he was using as headroom for thoroughness. Different lever. Different output. Both legitimate inside the rules I had set.
This is the harder diagnosis.
The cause was part-system, part-person.
The system — the loose process — was open enough to allow his rigidity to slow it down. His working style was real and earned and not wrong. Neither side was simply at fault.
Most leaders do not stay in this diagnosis long. It does not give them a clean target. It asks them to hold two true things at once and negotiate.
It was easier to call him rigid than to admit my process had been too loose. Both had to give for the work to move. I had to give first, because I had set the process.
I did not blame him. I did not override him. I did not redesign the process unilaterally and announce it.
I held a 1-on-1.
I named the misfit honestly. The looseness I had designed for one thing. The way his method was using it for another. Both real. Neither wrong.
We negotiated.
It took a long time.
The result was a workable hybrid. Enough structure for his method. Enough room for the team's creativity. Neither of us got the version we walked in with.
That is what finding the middle looks like. It is slower than picking a side. It is also the actual job.
What bad leadership usually does¶
The default move is to find a person and stop looking.
A problem shows up. The leader needs somewhere to push. The team is in the room. The leader names the team — or one person on the team — and acts.
It is fast. It is decisive-looking. It gives the leader something to do.
It is usually wrong.
Some leaders go further. They build a culture of finding the scapegoat early. Every problem has a name attached to it within the first meeting. The team learns to perform around this — to deflect, to pre-blame, to protect themselves before the leader's finger lands.
That team is not solving problems. That team is managing the leader's reflex.
The other failure mode is the opposite. Leaders who hear "find the root" and decide the system is always to blame. Personal accountability dissolves. Real performance problems get re-framed as structural problems. Nobody is responsible because everybody is.
Both are easier than the actual work.
The actual work is harder than either. Diagnose carefully. Name what is system, what is person, what is tangled. Hold both when both are true. Then act.
The principle¶
Understand the mechanism before blaming the person.
When the cause is tangled, do not pick a side. Find the middle.
Why it matters¶
If we punish the person and leave the broken system untouched, the next person will produce the same problem.
This is the cost most leaders never see.
The team gets reshuffled. The process stays. The leader feels like action was taken. Six months later, a different person hits the same wall, and the leader concludes they have a recurring talent problem.
They do not have a talent problem. They have a system that keeps generating the same output regardless of who is inside it.
The first read is almost always available. It is also almost always wrong.
The thing that catches the bad first read is not insight. It is patience. Looking past the closest target until the actual mechanism shows itself.
What better leadership looks like¶
A leader who slows down before naming the person.
A leader who notices when a problem keeps showing up across different people and lets that pattern reshape the diagnosis.
A leader who, when the cause is tangled, names both contributions honestly — including their own — and negotiates the middle rather than declaring a winner.
A leader who knows that system first is a posture, not a doctrine. Real people problems exist. They tend to surface early and look like character or fit, not like patterns. Patterns repeat. Character mismatches usually do not need a year of data to identify.
A leader who, when the system is the cause, fixes the system. When the person is the cause, holds the person accountable. When the cause is tangled, holds both.
A practical tool¶
The Root-Cause Read¶
When a problem shows up, before naming the person, ask:
1. Is this a one-time incident, or a pattern?
Patterns across multiple people point to the system. One person doing one thing once usually points to the person.
2. What expectation, system, or incentive are they working inside?
Was the standard clear? Was ownership clear? Was the workload realistic? Was the goal current? Was the incentive aligned with the behavior we want?
3. Did leadership give them what they needed to succeed?
Direction, training, time, authority, support. If any of these were missing, the gap is upstream of the person.
4. What would happen if I replaced this person with the most capable version of them?
If the same problem would still happen, the root is not the person.
5. Where would the same dynamic show up next?
If we fix only the person and not the structure, the same problem will recur with somebody else.
The five questions are the work. Question four is the one most leaders have not asked. It is the question that breaks the scapegoat reflex faster than any of the others. If the best version of this person would still hit the same wall, the wall is not the person.
The Tangle Diagnostic¶
For cases where the cause is part-system, part-person:
1. Name the system contribution honestly.
What about the structure made this misfit possible? Was the process too loose, too tight, too unclear, too contradictory?
2. Name the person contribution honestly.
What working style, choice, or preference is in play — and is it legitimate? Earned methods are not wrong because they did not match the system someone else built.
3. Find the middle, not the side.
The leader's job is to negotiate, not to declare a winner. Both sides usually have to give. The leader usually has to give first, because the leader set the structure both sides are working inside.
The Tangle Diagnostic is not a softer version of accountability. It is a harder one. It refuses to let the leader off the hook by naming the person. It refuses to let the person off the hook by naming the system. It asks both to be true at once.
That is what tangled causes actually look like.
Ethical boundaries¶
A few fences. Without them, this principle gets misread.
Find the root is not never hold anyone accountable. Personal accountability still exists. Externally, the leader owns the failure. Internally, the leader still fixes the system and holds people accountable for what they did inside it. Both happen. Neither replaces the other.
System first is not system always. Real people problems exist. They typically surface early — character mismatches, fit problems, ethical issues, things that show up in weeks, not years. The patterns that repeat across multiple people across time are the ones that point to the system. The isolated, early ones usually point to the person. The principle is about not defaulting to blame, not about refusing to name a person ever.
Sometimes a person genuinely will not change and needs to leave. The 1-on-1 in the second story worked because the senior was open to negotiation and his working style was legitimate. Not every misfit is negotiable. Some people, after honest conversation, will not move — and the leader's job is to act on that, not to keep negotiating forever.
The point is not control. The point is responsibility.
The responsibility is to diagnose carefully enough that the action fits the actual cause. Not the closest available target. Not the most comfortable target. The actual one.
Simple rules¶
- Before naming a person, ask if this is an isolated incident or a repeated pattern.
- If the same problem keeps showing up across different people, the variable is not the people. It is what they all share.
- Run the replace with the best version test. If the same problem would still happen, the root is not the person.
- When the cause is tangled, name both contributions honestly. Including your own.
- When the cause is tangled, find the middle. Do not pick a side.
- The leader usually has to give first. The leader set the structure both sides are working inside.
- Hold the line on personal accountability. Find the root is not a release from consequence.
- Some misfits are negotiable. Some are not. Know the difference and act.
Reflection questions¶
- The problem I am about to act on — is it isolated, or has the same kind of thing shown up across other people on this team?
- What expectation, system, or incentive is this person working inside? Is any of it broken, stale, or unclear?
- Did I give this person what they needed to succeed — direction, training, time, authority, support?
- If I replaced this person with the most capable version of them, would the same problem still happen?
- If I fix only the person and not the structure, where will this same dynamic show up next?
- When the cause is part-system, part-person, am I holding both honestly — or quietly picking the side that lets me act fastest?
- Where is the structure I set contributing to this? What do I have to give first?
Reminder¶
Blame gives us a target.
Root cause gives us a solution.
The first read is almost always available. It is also almost always wrong.
That is the standard.