The Real Reason You're Stuck (And It's Not What You Think)

A conversation I had with a CEO last month still keeps me up at night.

He was convinced his company was failing because of budget cuts, a difficult board, and brutal market conditions. Every solution he'd tried had failed. Every consultant he'd hired had pointed to external factors beyond his control.

But after 30 minutes of digging deeper, we uncovered something that changed everything.

The Surface Problem Trap

Most leaders think they're stuck because of external circumstances—budget cuts, difficult teams, market conditions, "impossible" timelines. We become masters at managing symptoms while the real issue grows stronger underground.

We're experts at solving the wrong problem.

I know because I lived this for years. The biggest "failure" of my early career looked like a resource problem. My team was new, our product was untested, and we were fourth in a competitive market. Every metric said we were doomed to miss our numbers.

But when we stopped focusing on what we couldn't control and started asking better questions, everything shifted.

Compare that to every other quarter where I fought the circumstances and burned out my team trying to overcome external obstacles. Those quarters? We hit our numbers through force, but the cost was unsustainable.

The difference wasn't the circumstances. It was whether we were solving the real problem or just managing the symptoms.

The Pattern That Actually Works

After coaching thousands of leaders through transitions, I can say with certainty: The first problem you identify is almost never the real problem.

The magic happens when you dig deeper.

Like the executive who thought she needed better time management but discovered she actually needed better boundaries. Or the sales team who thought they needed more leads but discovered they needed more conviction about their value proposition.