A few months ago, I was facilitating a leadership session for a group of public sector managers. At one point, I asked them to name a recurring challenge they faced.

One participant smiled wryly and said,

“Every year, we fix the same problem. It just comes back dressed differently.”

Heads nodded across the room.

That’s the quiet fatigue of many well-intentioned organizations.
We solve harder each year — yet the problems return, reshaped, rebranded, unresolved.

The reason isn’t lack of intelligence, will, or effort.
It’s that most leaders are trained to fix, not to see.

Why Problems Recur

When a problem surfaces — an employee conflict, low engagement, public complaints — our instinct is to act.
Acting feels productive. It signals control.

But action without systems awareness is reaction.

As Donella Meadows wrote in Thinking in Systems, “A system’s behavior reveals itself only in the long term.”
Quick fixes bring short-term relief, but they often reinforce the very patterns we’re trying to break.

I often tell leaders:

“You can’t solve what you don’t understand — and you can’t understand what you won’t pause to see.”

From Firefighting to Sense-Making

Leaders who sustain results don’t rush to fix problems; they learn to reframe them.

Ron Heifetz’s Adaptive Leadership framework distinguishes between technical and adaptive challenges.

• Technical problems can be solved with existing expertise.
• Adaptive challenges require learning, cross-boundary collaboration, and mindset shifts.

Most organizational struggles are adaptive — but we treat them as technical.
We run workshops, issue memos, tweak policies… and the cycle restarts.

Adaptive challenges demand reflection, not reaction. They ask leaders to hold uncertainty and engage curiosity before they intervene.

Case: Somerville City — Seeing the Whole System

In Somerville City Hall, Mayor Joseph Curtatone faced a different kind of challenge — a city overwhelmed by complexity.
Health, housing, education, and equity were deeply intertwined. Each department was fixing its own part — but the problems overlapped.

Rather than create another task force, Curtatone built SomerStat, a citywide data and learning system that connected departments through shared insight.

When COVID-19 hit, that system allowed Somerville to see the city as an ecosystem — not a set of silos.
They didn’t just react to crisis; they adapted in real time, guided by feedback and collaboration.

That’s problem-solving at the systems level — where leadership shifts from managing parts to orchestrating the whole.

The Leadership Competencies of Systemic Problem-Solving

1. Curiosity Over Certainty
   Leaders who ask better questions find deeper truths.

• Practice: Before solving, pause and ask: “What might be true here that we’re not seeing?”

1. Pattern Recognition
   Look for what repeats — regardless of who’s in charge.

• Practice: List the top three recurring issues in your team. What underlying dynamics connect them?

1. Perspective-Taking
   Understand how the issue looks from other vantage points.

• Practice: Use the “three chairs” method — yours, theirs, and the system’s. What shifts?

1. Collaborative Inquiry
   Bring voices from across the ecosystem together.

• Practice: Ask, “Who else holds part of the truth about this?”

1. Learning Agility
   Treat every failed fix as system feedback.

• Practice: End each project with one question: “What pattern revealed itself here?”

Framework: The 5-Step Systemic Problem-Solving Model

This simple model helps teams shift from action to awareness — from fixing symptoms to redesigning systems.

1. Name the Problem Clearly. What’s happening? Who’s affected? What’s at stake?
2. See the System. Who interacts with this issue? Where are the feedback loops?
3. Surface Assumptions. What stories are shaping our understanding?
4. Experiment Small, Learn Fast. Run small tests, observe patterns, adjust.
5. Reflect and Recalibrate. Use reflection as a governance tool, not an afterthought.

When leaders use this approach, they turn complexity into learning and confusion into clarity.

How Coaching Helps Shift from Fixing to Seeing

When I coach leaders through complex challenges, I often notice their first instinct is to “own” the problem. They say things like:

“I feel responsible to solve this for my team.”

That’s admirable — but incomplete.

Leadership is not about owning the problem.
It’s about owning the process by which problems are understood.

In coaching, I often invite them to reflect:

• What patterns are you part of without realizing it?
• What conversations are not being had because everyone’s too busy solving?
• What would happen if you waited just one more meeting before prescribing the fix?

These moments of reflection build what I call sense-making capacity — the ability to see the story beneath the situation.

From Fixing to Framing

Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow reminds us that intuition is powerful — but prone to bias. Leaders must learn to slow their thinking enough to frame before they act.

Framing is where empathy meets logic and vision meets humility.
It’s where we stop saying, “This is the problem,” and start asking, “What’s the nature of the system that keeps producing this?”

When leaders master framing, they stop managing chaos and start guiding transformation.

Reflective Practice for Teams

In your next team meeting, try this:

1. Ask each person to name a recurring problem they see in the organization.
2. Collect them on a board — no discussion yet.
3. Then ask: “What connects these?”
   You’ll find patterns — unspoken assumptions, power loops, emotional habits.
4. Discuss one question: “What would happen if we stopped fixing and started learning from these patterns?”

This one exercise can change the leadership conversation for months.

In Closing

Great problem-solvers don’t have better answers — they have better questions.
They replace the rush to fix with the courage to understand.
They listen to what the system is trying to tell them.

And in doing so, they move their organizations — and themselves — from reaction to evolution.

Because real problem-solving isn’t about eliminating pain.
It’s about transforming the patterns that cause it.

References (APA 7th Edition)

• Cooperrider, D. L., & Whitney, D. (2005). Appreciative inquiry: A positive revolution in change. Berrett-Koehler.
• Heifetz, R. A., Grashow, A., & Linsky, M. (2009). The practice of adaptive leadership: Tools and tactics for changing your organization and the world. Harvard Business Press.
• Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
• Meadows, D. H. (2008). Thinking in systems: A primer. Chelsea Green Publishing.
• Public Service Division, Singapore. (2019). Public Sector Transformation Framework. Government of Singapore.
• Senge, P. M. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. Doubleday.
• UNDP Global Centre for Public Service Excellence. (2020). Innovation for public value: Systems approaches in government. United Nations Development Programme.