In just two days last week, I encountered four examples of clients repeatedly jumping through hoops to manage dysfunctional situations rather than fix the situations.

• Constantly changing time reports to accurately reflect vacation and sick time in a system that requires employees to record work hours before the week even begins
• Struggling to make an unnecessary standing meeting effective rather than canceling or redefining the purpose of the meeting
• Plotting to avoid power struggles and find meaningful work for someone whose responsibilities need to be shifted and redefined
• Focusing on perfecting a plan when the track record points to dusty plans and no execution

Dissimilar as these are, they are all examples of wasting time and money unnecessarily and repeatedly by not addressing the underlying problem. 

If your plans are rarely implemented, the plan isn’t the problem. If obsolete responsibility assignments make you tiptoe around an individual, the responsibilities need to be clarified or changed. If you’ve got a meeting in search of a purpose, cancel it. If your systems are cumbersome and causing rework, change the systems. Bite the bullet and fix the underlying problem. It may take a little time and courage, but it makes no sense to suffer repeatedly at the hand of a dysfunctional situation.

Not sure what those situations are or how to fix them? The first clues are frustration and fog. The next time a situation is annoying, painful, or clearly unsatisfactory, no matter how many times you’ve plowed through it before, ask why. Why are we doing this? Why are we in this situation? Why aren’t we succeeding? Why is this so hard? Ask “Why?” until you gain clarity.

Clarity makes problems evident, solutions specific, and systems simpler. If it hurts, stop doing it!