Leadership in the Wild: Leaders fix systems, not symptoms

This week reminded me how easy it is to get pulled into solving the problem right in front of you — the loud one, the urgent one, the one everyone is reacting to.

But leadership in the wild often requires something different:

stepping back far enough to see the pattern underneath the noise.

I was working with a team that kept running into the same issue. Every week, a new version of the problem showed up — different details, same frustration. People were exhausted from putting out fires, and the quick fixes weren’t sticking.

So, I zoomed out.

Instead of asking, “How do we fix this?”

I asked,

“Why does this keep happening?”

That one shift changed everything.

We realized the issue wasn’t the task, the timing, or the people.

It was the system around the work — unclear handoffs, assumptions about ownership, and a process that had quietly drifted out of alignment.

Once we named the real problem, the solution became obvious.

The fires stopped.

The team relaxed.

And the work started flowing again.

Systems thinking isn’t complicated.

It’s simply the discipline of stepping back far enough to see what’s actually driving the pattern.

When leaders fix the system, the symptoms take care of themselves.