When something isn’t working, organizations tend to move quickly toward a solution.
A metric declines. Performance shifts. Engagement changes. A process stops producing the results it once did.
We see the outcome, decide what must be causing it, and start fixing.
But what if the problem we’re solving isn’t actually the problem?
What We See Is Not Always What Is Happening
I have seen this throughout my career.
A performance problem is identified, and the immediate conclusion is that people need to do more.
Sometimes they do.
But sometimes, when you get closer to the work, you discover something entirely different.
What looks like a performance problem may actually be a coordination problem.
What looks like a capacity problem may actually be a workflow problem.
What looks like an engagement problem may actually be a trust problem.
And sometimes what appears to require more doesn’t require more at all. It requires us to better understand what is already happening.
One of the risks in organizational problem-solving is that we can confuse an outcome with an explanation.
A declining metric tells us that something has changed. It does not tell us why.
Yet organizations often move quickly from the data to a conclusion. Once that conclusion is repeated often enough, it can become accepted as the problem itself. Resources are assigned. Expectations change. New initiatives are introduced. People may even be held accountable for correcting something the organization has not fully understood.
A dashboard can tell us where to look.
It cannot always tell us what is happening.
Get Close Enough to the Work
Before we decide what needs to change, we have to understand what is actually happening.
Not what should be happening.
Not what the policy says is happening.
Not what we assume is happening.
What is actually happening where the work is being done?
Getting close to the work requires understanding the experience of the people doing it, seeing how processes operate in practice, identifying where expectations become unclear, and recognizing where the way we designed the work differs from the way the work actually happens.
The purpose is not simply to validate the explanation we started with. The purpose is to determine whether that explanation is true.
Sometimes the assessment confirms what we thought.
Sometimes it changes the problem entirely.
Either outcome is valuable because now we are solving from clarity rather than assumption.
The Change Cannot Support Itself
There is another mistake I have seen organizations make.
Something works.
The results improve.
And we move on.
We assume that because the intervention worked, the change will continue.
It won’t. Not without intentional effort.
I think about sustainability very simply:
The change cannot support itself.
Leaders have to support it.
There is a difference between achieving a result and building organizational capability.
A change can work exceptionally well in one team, department, or location because a committed leader is driving it. But if the practice weakens when that leader’s attention shifts, or if it cannot spread without that individual pushing it forward, the organization has demonstrated an effective intervention. It has not yet built sustainable capability.
Current research reinforces this distinction. Leadership and organizational support remain important to sustainability, but leadership enthusiasm alone is not enough. Sustainability also depends on factors such as leadership capability, workforce support, training, organizational context, resources, and the fit of the intervention with the environment in which it operates (Zurynski et al., 2023).
Organizations are filled with initiatives that worked. The harder question is whether those improvements became part of how the organization operates.
Sustainability Does Not Mean Standing Still
There is another dimension of sustainability that leaders should consider.
Sustaining change does not necessarily mean preserving every element of an intervention exactly as it was originally designed.
Organizations change.
Teams change.
Resources change.
Priorities change.
The conditions surrounding the work change.
A systematic review of frameworks for complex health interventions examines adaptability, scalability, and sustainability together, identifying organizational context, leadership, monitoring, and evaluation as relevant factors (Sun et al., 2024).
That creates an important leadership responsibility.
Leaders have to recognize the difference between drift and adaptation.
Drift occurs when the organization gradually moves away from the practices necessary to produce the intended result.
Adaptation occurs when the organization intentionally adjusts the work because the conditions surrounding it have changed.
One should be corrected.
The other may be necessary.
Knowing the difference requires leaders to remain close enough to the work to understand what is changing and why.
This is why sustainability cannot be treated as something that happens after implementation. It has to be considered when the change is being designed and continually evaluated as the organization evolves.
Sustainability isn’t what happens after the work. Sustainability is part of the work.
See Clearly. Align Intentionally. Execute Sustainably.
This is why I believe sustainable transformation begins with clarity.
See Clearly. Understand what is actually producing the outcome before deciding what needs to change.
Align Intentionally. Make sure the solution addresses the problem you actually uncovered and that the organization is aligned around what will be required to change it.
Execute Sustainably. Build the leadership ownership, structure, reinforcement, measurement, and accountability necessary for the change to last, while remaining responsive to changing conditions.
Organizations do not need another solution simply because something isn’t working.
Sometimes they need to stop long enough to understand the problem they are actually trying to solve.
And when they find something that works, the job isn’t finished.
The question changes from “Did it work?” to “Can the organization sustain it?”
Those are not the same question.
The change cannot support itself. Leadership must.
References
- Sun, L., Booth, A., & Sworn, K. (2024). Adaptability, scalability and sustainability (ASaS) of complex health interventions: A systematic review of theories, models and frameworks. Implementation Science, 19, Article 52. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13012-024-01375-7
- Zurynski, Y., Ludlow, K., Testa, L., Augustsson, H., Herkes-Deane, J., Hutchinson, K., Lamprell, G., McPherson, E., Carrigan, A., Ellis, L. A., Dharmayani, P. N. A., Smith, C. L., Richardson, L., Dammery, G., Singh, N., & Braithwaite, J. (2023). Built to last? Barriers and facilitators of healthcare program sustainability: A systematic integrative review. Implementation Science, 18, Article 62. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13012-023-01315-x