Widen the Frame: The Solution You Know Is Not Always the Solution You Need
Why executive judgment begins by widening the frame.
The most expensive leadership mistake is often choosing a good solution to the wrong problem.
When a difficult issue reaches the executive table, each function sees a legitimate version of it. Technology sees systems. Operations sees process. Finance sees cost. HR sees capability. Legal sees risk.
Each perspective reveals something. None necessarily reveals the whole.
Expertise helps us recognize patterns and act quickly. It also makes certain interventions feel obvious: training, automation, restructuring, another control.
Sometimes that instinct is right. Sometimes training is applied to a broken process. Technology accelerates work that should have been eliminated. A new control reduces one risk while creating delays and workarounds elsewhere.
The problem is not expertise. The problem is allowing expertise to define the problem before the organization has understood it.
There are not two sides. There are 47.
I have said throughout my career that there are not one or two sides to every story. There are 47.
What looks like resistance may be poor design. What looks like a people problem may be a workload problem. What looks like an AI opportunity may be a process that first needs to be simplified—or stopped.
“Seek to understand” is disciplined observation. Follow the work. Listen to the people doing it. Examine the handoffs, exceptions, incentives, and unofficial workarounds. Distinguish what happened from the explanation someone has already attached to it.
The goal is not to examine all 47 sides forever. It is to avoid acting as though the first two are the only ones that exist.
Leadership has to see across the business
Specialists should bring strong points of view. Executive leadership must integrate those perspectives, anticipate downstream effects, and choose.
That requires asking:
- Are we addressing the cause or making the symptom less visible?
- What will this improve—and who will absorb the burden?
- What new work, risks, or constraints could it create?
- Will it serve the business beyond the immediate problem?
Gathering perspectives does not require consensus. The decision-maker still owns the decision. But a solution that improves one function while shifting the bottleneck to another deserves scrutiny before it becomes an enterprise initiative.
The right intervention may involve people, process, technology, structure, policy, governance—or a combination. The diagnosis should determine the tools.
A deliberate pause can create speed
“Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.”
Brakes allow a car to travel quickly with control. Organizations need that same capacity: enough discipline to test assumptions before committing resources, then move decisively.
Without it, a familiar cycle follows. Leaders select a solution, launch implementation, discover the downstream consequences, and start a second initiative to repair the first.
The pause should match the stakes. A reversible decision may need an hour and three perspectives. A consequential redesign may require data and direct observation. Both need a clear point at which diagnosis ends and action begins.
Before choosing an intervention, agree on the problem, the outcome that matters, and the evidence that would show whether the proposed change works. Where uncertainty remains, start with a measurable step that can be adjusted.
The expert’s first recommendation may still be the best answer. Now there is a reason to believe it.
Think about the last significant problem your leadership team solved. Did you select the best intervention—or the one someone at the table already knew how to deliver?