What Needs to Change There First?

This series, Under the Visible, is about the problems most organizations can't see, the structural issues hiding underneath the visible symptoms. These issues produce the same problems over and over no matter how many times they get "fixed." Tate Linden is guiding us through through a set of questions designed to help you find them.

Knowing which layer a problem is coming from is useful. But it doesn't tell you what to do. The next question is harder: what does an intervention actually look like at that level, and how do you know if you're doing it right?

The interventions look more different from each other than most people expect.

Execution is the human layer. The people driving the cars, running the tollbooths, painting the columns. An execution problem means the people doing the work don't have the capability, the clarity, or the capacity to do it correctly. The fix lives there too: hiring, developing, or repositioning people. Sometimes it means being honest that someone is in the wrong role. Execution fixes are the most visible and the fastest to implement. They're also the most overused, because they're easy to point to and they feel decisive. Telling someone to do better, or replacing them with someone who can, looks like action. It often is. But it only solves the problem when the problem actually lives at this level, and it rarely does when the same issue has surfaced repeatedly with different people in the same role.

One layer down are the systems: the workflows, processes, and tools that organize how work moves. A systems problem means the structure of the work itself is making it hard to do the work correctly. Handoffs break at the same point regardless of who's managing them. A tool creates friction that slows every team that touches it. A process routes decisions through a step that adds time without adding value. The fix here is redesigning the system, not coaching the people operating inside it. The test is simple: could capable, motivated people consistently do this work correctly with the current system? If yes, the problem probably isn't here. If no, fixing the people is a waste of everyone's time until the system changes.

Below systems are the rules. Not just written policies, but the operating logic of the organization: what gets prioritized when things conflict, what decisions can be made at what level, what's treated as negotiable and what isn't. A lot of rules are unwritten. They live in what leadership rewards, what it tolerates, and what happens when someone breaks with convention. A rules-level intervention means making something explicit that was previously ambiguous. Changing an approval structure. Clarifying who actually owns a decision. Drawing a line around something that's been left open because closing it felt uncomfortable. That discomfort is usually a sign you're in the right place. Rules fixes require authority and often require someone with real standing to say, clearly and on the record, that the organization has decided to prioritize X over Y when they conflict. Without that clarity, the systems built on top will keep producing the same friction, because the people inside them are still trying to resolve the same unresolved question every time it surfaces.

Below rules sits purpose. Usually not just the mission statement, but the real answer to what the organization is actually trying to achieve and what it's willing to give up to get there. Many organizations have a stated purpose and an operational purpose that don't match. The stated one shows up in presentations. The operational one shows up in decisions under pressure. When a client pushes back, do you hold the boundary or accommodate? When speed conflicts with quality, which one actually wins? When those answers are inconsistent, or when different parts of the organization are answering them differently, the rules built on top can't hold. People can't apply rules reliably to tradeoffs they've never seen explicitly resolved. A purpose-level intervention requires leadership to make real decisions, not issue statements. It's slower and more uncomfortable than anything above it, and the results take longer to show up in the work. But when this is the source, nothing above it will hold until it's addressed.

At the base is awareness: what the organization actually understands about its situation. A company that believes its customers are satisfied because survey scores look good, while actual customer behavior is quietly shifting, has an awareness problem. A leadership team that thinks its culture is high-trust because that's what people say in all-hands meets, while the real dynamics are visible to anyone doing the work, has an awareness problem. Fixing this layer means changing what information gets collected, how it travels, who sees it, and whether the conditions exist for accurate information to actually surface. It's the hardest fix and the slowest to show results. It's also the most consequential, because every layer above it is built on what the organization believes to be true.

The effort required increases as you go deeper. So does the durability of the fix. Execution fixes take days or weeks. Systems fixes take weeks or months. Rules changes require authority and explicit decision-making. Purpose fixes require leadership alignment and the willingness to close off options. Awareness fixes require structural changes to how information moves. Each one is harder than the one above it. Each one lasts longer when it's the right fix.

What most organizations do under pressure is stay near the top. The urgency is real, and fixes at the execution and systems level produce visible results fast. The problem is that a fix at the wrong level doesn't just fail to solve the problem. It spends capital, creates change fatigue, and gives the skeptics more evidence that nothing ever really changes. The willingness to attempt the harder fix, the one at the right level, gets weaker every time the wrong one is tried.

At this point, we’ve got two questions we need to do with: how will leadership know what the right solution is, and why will they commit to it? Next time.

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