Why Most Business Owners Are Solving the Wrong Problem
Most business owners go looking for information on how to improve profit, cashflow, growth, recruitment, accountability or time.
Having worked with owner-managed businesses for many years, I’ve found that those problems are often symptoms rather than causes.
The real challenge is identifying the underlying issue that is creating them.
In fact, every business featured in this article came looking for help with one problem and discovered the real issue was something entirely different.
One of the most common mistakes business owners make is assuming that the problem they can see is the problem they need to solve.
It sounds obvious.
If profit is low, surely the problem is profit.
If cashflow is tight, surely the problem is cashflow.
If staff are underperforming, surely the problem is the staff.
If everything depends on the owner, surely the answer is delegation.
Unfortunately, business is rarely that simple.
In fact, after working with owner-managed businesses for many years, I’ve come to believe that the visible problem is often nothing more than a symptom of something deeper.
The challenge is that symptoms get your attention.
The real problem often sits quietly underneath, causing issue after issue while remaining largely unnoticed.
The Business Owner’s Dilemma
Most business owners are not problem solvers.
They’re problem dealers.
They have to be.
Business is full of problems.
Customers change their minds.
Staff leave.
Suppliers let you down.
Projects run over.
Costs increase.
Cash gets tight.
Every day something needs attention.
The ability to deal with those challenges is one of the reasons many business owners become successful in the first place.
The problem is that dealing with a problem and solving a problem are not the same thing.
Most owners become incredibly good at treating symptoms.
Something goes wrong.
They fix it.
The pressure reduces.
The business keeps moving.
Then they move on to the next challenge.
What they often don’t have the time, knowledge or perspective to do is stop and ask:
“What caused that problem in the first place?”
As a result, the same issues tend to appear again and again.
Sometimes they look slightly different.
Sometimes they show up in another part of the business.
But they’re often driven by the same underlying cause.
It’s a bit like taking painkillers for a recurring headache.
The pain goes away.
For a while.
But if you never discover what’s causing the headache, it keeps coming back.
The same thing happens in business.
An owner sees low profit and focuses on profit.
They see poor accountability and focus on accountability.
They see cashflow problems and focus on cashflow.
They see a recruitment problem and focus on recruitment.
The symptom becomes the focus.
The symptom becomes the conversation.
The symptom becomes the strategy.
Meanwhile, the real cause remains untouched.
And that is why many business owners find themselves dealing with the same frustrations year after year, despite working incredibly hard to solve them.
Ten Businesses. Ten Different Problems.
Recently I looked back at a number of businesses I’ve worked with over the years.
On the surface they appeared to have very different challenges.
One had a cashflow problem.
Another had a growth problem.
Another struggled with accountability.
Another wasn’t making enough profit.
Another owner was overwhelmed and running out of time.
Different businesses.
Different industries.
Different people.
Different symptoms.
Yet when we dug deeper, a fascinating pattern emerged.
The problem they thought they had was almost never the problem that needed solving.
It was simply the symptom they could see.
“We’ve Got a Cashflow Problem”
One business came looking for help because cashflow was constantly under pressure.
Like many owners, they assumed they needed more sales, better forecasting or tighter control of spending.
What we actually discovered was something very different.
There were no meaningful measurements.
No management systems.
No visibility of performance.
No understanding of which activities were creating value and which were destroying it.
They didn’t know how many leads they generated.
They didn’t know how many converted into customers.
They didn’t know what influenced a buying decision.
Instead, they assumed price was the deciding factor and regularly discounted work to win business.
The problem was that discounting was attracting the wrong type of customer while reducing profitability at the same time.
Cashflow wasn’t really the problem.
Cashflow was simply the outcome of a business being run without the information needed to make effective decisions.
Once they started measuring the right things, understanding what really drove buying decisions and managing the business using meaningful data, the cashflow started to improve.
Cashflow wasn’t really the problem.
Cashflow was simply the outcome of a business being run without the information needed to make effective decisions.
Once they started measuring the right things, understanding what really drove buying decisions and managing the business using meaningful data, the cashflow started to improve.
In just four months the business moved from making a loss over the previous six months to achieving an 8% profit in the most recent month.
More importantly, they now understand what is driving performance and are forecasting that profit will increase further to around 12% over the coming months.
The difference is that they are no longer guessing.
They are making decisions based on facts rather than assumptions.
“We Need to Grow”
Another owner wanted help growing the business so they could eventually exit.
The business was already successful.
The market was there.
The opportunities existed.
Growth wasn’t really the issue.
The real problem was that every significant decision still flowed through the owner.
He was convinced nobody else could do what he did.
In many ways he was right.
Nobody else in the business knew how to make the decisions he made, solve the problems he solved or manage the situations he dealt with every day.
The obvious conclusion was that the team weren’t capable.
The reality was something very different.
Nobody else knew how to do it because nobody had ever been taught.
Every previous attempt to delegate had ended in frustration.
Someone would make a mistake.
Something would go wrong.
The owner would step back in and take control again.
Over time this reinforced the belief that nobody else was capable.
What we eventually discovered was that the issue wasn’t capability.
It was communication.
It was training.
It was a lack of clear expectations.
Most importantly, it was the assumption that because something seemed obvious to the owner, it should be obvious to everyone else.
The business wasn’t constrained by the market.
It wasn’t constrained by demand.
It was constrained by the owner’s ability to transfer knowledge and develop the people around him.
Until that changed, growth would simply create more pressure, more dependency and more frustration.
Within just a couple of months, the conversation had completely changed.
Instead of asking how to grow, they were now able to identify exactly what needed to happen to take the business from around £5 million turnover to £10 million turnover.
The management structure required was becoming clearer.
The development and training needs of the team had been identified.
The key roles the business would need in the future were understood.
Most importantly, there was now a practical roadmap that linked growth to the owner’s longer-term exit plans.
Growth stopped being a hope.
It became a plan.
“We’re Not Making Enough Profit”
I’ve heard this countless times.
The owner believes profit is the problem.
Yet when we start asking questions, profit often turns out to be the result of several other issues.
One owner was terrified of increasing prices.
Another wasn’t measuring conversion rates.
Another had no meaningful understanding of the financial drivers in the business.
Another was allowing poor performance to continue unchecked because they didn’t want to upset the team.
What often sits underneath all of these issues is a series of assumptions that have never been properly tested.
One of the most common is around pricing.
Many owners become convinced they are too expensive.
Customers tell them they are too expensive.
Prospects tell them they are too expensive.
Quotes don’t get accepted and they assume the price is the problem.
The trouble is that “you’re too expensive” can mean two very different things.
The first means:
“I genuinely cannot afford what you’re selling.”
That is often a marketing problem.
You’re talking to people who are not your ideal customers.
The second means:
“I don’t understand the value of what you’re offering.”
That is often a sales problem.
The money exists.
The value simply hasn’t been communicated effectively.
The challenge is that both objections sound exactly the same.
Without meaningful measurements and a proper understanding of the sales process, owners often make decisions based on assumptions rather than evidence.
They reduce prices.
They discount.
They chase more work.
They attract the wrong customers.
Then wonder why profit remains under pressure.
Profit wasn’t the root cause.
Profit was the scoreboard.
The real issue was leadership, management, measurement and decision-making.
Once the owner understood what was really driving buying decisions, what was influencing conversion and which customers created the most value, profit started to improve naturally.
What changed wasn’t just the price.
What changed was the understanding of the numbers behind the business.
We started measuring the number of enquiries coming into the business.
Then we looked at which of those enquiries were actually ideal customers.
We measured how many became quotations.
We measured how many of those quotations became sales.
Once we understood the numbers, we were able to adjust pricing with confidence and monitor the impact on conversion rates.
Instead of guessing, we had evidence.
Instead of assuming customers were leaving because of price, we could see what was actually happening.
As confidence grew, prices increased.
Margins improved.
The business became more profitable.
Within seven months, the owner went from having virtually no money left in the business at the end of each year to having more than £40,000 sitting in the bank.
The profit problem wasn’t solved by working harder.
It was solved by understanding what was really driving profit and making better decisions as a result.
“Nobody Takes Responsibility”
This is one of my favourites because it sounds so obvious.
The owner is frustrated.
The team aren’t taking ownership.
Nobody seems accountable.
Everybody waits to be told what to do.
Everybody seems to have an excuse.
Yet when we dig deeper, the conversation often changes.
What are the expectations?
What are the standards?
What are the rules?
How are people managed?
How often are those expectations reinforced?
One of the most common phrases I hear business owners say is:
“It’s just common sense, Andy.”
The trouble is, there is no such thing as common sense.
For something to be common sense, we would all need to have had the same upbringing, the same education, the same experiences and the same understanding of the world.
Business owners often forget that the things which seem obvious to them have usually been learned over many years of experience.
The people around them haven’t had those experiences.
They’re employees, not business owners.
They’re looking at the world through a completely different lens.
In one business, the owner expected everybody to follow a set of values and principles that had never actually been communicated.
They assumed everyone knew what good looked like.
They assumed everyone understood the standards.
They assumed everyone would make decisions the same way they would.
The team couldn’t follow rules they didn’t know existed.
They couldn’t meet expectations that had never been explained.
The accountability problem wasn’t really an accountability problem.
It was a leadership and communication problem.
More importantly, it was an expectation problem.
The owner expected people to know things they had never been taught.
This is where accountability often gets misunderstood.
Many owners believe accountability is something they do to people.
In reality, accountability starts with the leader.
People tend to follow the standards that are demonstrated, tolerated and reinforced.
If the leader avoids difficult conversations, the team learns to avoid difficult conversations.
If the leader doesn’t follow processes, the team learns processes are optional.
If the leader doesn’t take responsibility for leadership, management and communication, the team learns responsibility isn’t particularly important.
Culture doesn’t appear by accident.
If you don’t consciously create a culture, your team will create one for you.
And there is no guarantee you’ll like the result.
The reason many businesses struggle with accountability isn’t because the people are bad.
It’s because the expectations are unclear, the standards are inconsistent and the leadership isn’t creating the environment required for accountability to thrive.
Once those things change, accountability often improves surprisingly quickly.
Not because the people changed.
Because the conditions they were operating in changed.
Of course, this wasn’t an overnight transformation.
Changing expectations, behaviours and culture takes time.
Over the following months, we worked together to establish a clear set of guiding principles for the business.
Some people would call them values.
I prefer to think of them as the rules of the game.
We introduced regular team meetings.
We introduced one-to-one conversations.
We strengthened communication.
We improved management.
Most importantly, we made sure everybody understood what was expected of them and why it mattered.
The culture gradually started to change.
People became more involved.
Problems were identified earlier.
Decisions were made closer to where the work was happening.
Responsibility became part of the culture rather than something imposed from above.
The business also recruited a strong manager who was able to reinforce those standards and support the team day to day.
Today, the business looks very different.
The owner no longer needs to be involved in every decision.
The team are capable of running the day-to-day operation without constant supervision.
In fact, the owner now goes into work when he chooses rather than because he has to.
The accountability problem wasn’t solved by demanding more accountability.
It was solved by creating the leadership, management and culture that allowed accountability to exist in the first place.
“I Don’t Have Enough Time”
Perhaps the most common complaint of all.
Business owners tell me they are overwhelmed.
Working long hours.
Constantly interrupted.
Always firefighting.
Never able to switch off.
What makes this one particularly frustrating is that many owners wear being busy like a badge of honour.
Almost as if being busy is proof that they’re working hard.
The reality is that being busy and being productive are not the same thing.
The real question isn’t:
“How busy am I?”
The real question is:
“Am I spending my time on the most important thing right now?”
Unfortunately, many business owners aren’t.
I regularly meet owners who are drowning in debt, struggling with poor performance, frustrated by staff issues and overwhelmed by operational problems.
Yet they spend almost no time addressing the root causes of those issues.
They’re too busy dealing with the symptoms.
The irony is that the route to a simpler, easier business is usually through the very problems they’re avoiding.
Instead of fixing the cause, they spend their days managing the consequences.
Most assume they have a time management problem.
In my experience they usually don’t.
More often they have a dependency problem.
The business relies on them for decisions.
The team relies on them for answers.
The systems rely on them for oversight.
The owner has unintentionally become the glue holding everything together.
Over time they become trapped.
The more problems they solve, the more essential they become.
The more essential they become, the less time they have.
The less time they have, the fewer opportunities they have to fix the underlying causes.
So the cycle continues.
The issue isn’t really time.
The issue is how the business has been designed to operate.
A well-designed business creates time.
A poorly designed business consumes it.
That’s why working harder rarely solves the problem.
The answer is not normally better time management.
The answer is removing the causes that create the constant demand on your time in the first place.
In this particular business, the breakthrough came when we stopped talking about time and started talking about responsibility.
Who was responsible for what?
Who was allowed to make which decisions?
Who decided who did the work?
How would performance be measured?
How would feedback be given?
Those questions sound simple, but they changed everything.
Over time we introduced clear responsibilities, meaningful performance measures and regular one-to-one conversations.
Team members received consistent feedback on what was going well, what wasn’t going so well and what needed to improve.
Expectations became clearer.
Decision-making became more structured.
Confidence grew throughout the business.
As the team developed, we were able to build a robust decision-making framework that allowed responsibility to be delegated without creating chaos.
People knew what decisions they could make.
They knew when to ask for help.
They knew what success looked like.
The result was fewer mistakes, less firefighting and far less dependency on the owner.
Most importantly, the owner was finally able to step away from the day-to-day management of the business and focus on the part of the role he enjoyed most: sales and business development.
As his time shifted away from managing problems and towards creating opportunities, the business experienced significant growth.
The time problem wasn’t solved through better time management.
It was solved through better leadership, better management and better decision-making throughout the business.
The Pattern Behind The Pattern
What struck me looking across all of these businesses was not how different they were.
It was how similar they were.
The visible symptoms were different.
The underlying causes were remarkably consistent.
Lack of leadership.
Lack of management.
Poor measurement.
Unclear expectations.
Weak systems.
Undefined processes.
Owner dependency.
A business that had evolved naturally rather than being intentionally designed.
That’s why I often say:
Most businesses are perfectly designed to produce the results they currently produce.
If the results aren’t what you want, it is rarely enough to focus on the symptom.
You need to understand what is creating it.
The Most Important Question
Most business owners ask:
“What is the problem?”
I think a better question is:
“What is causing the problem?”
Because that question changes everything.
Instead of looking at profit, you look at what drives profit.
Instead of looking at accountability, you look at what creates accountability.
Instead of looking at growth, you look at what enables growth.
Instead of looking at time, you look at what is creating dependency.
The symptom points you towards the issue.
The cause tells you where to focus.
A Different Way of Looking at Business
The owners who make the biggest improvements are rarely the smartest.
They are rarely the most experienced.
They are rarely the hardest working.
They are simply willing to challenge their assumptions.
They are willing to ask:
“What if the problem I can see isn’t the real problem?”
Because once you start asking that question, the conversation changes.
Over the years I’ve come to believe that most results in life and business are outcomes.
They’re the consequence of something.
If you want better relationships, you have to become better at building relationships.
If you want more trust, you have to become more trustworthy.
If you want more success, you usually have to help more people become successful.
The outcome is rarely the starting point.
The cause is.
Business works in exactly the same way.
Profit is an outcome.
Accountability is an outcome.
Growth is an outcome.
Culture is an outcome.
Customer loyalty is an outcome.
Even time is an outcome.
They are all the result of decisions, behaviours, systems, leadership and management.
That’s why focusing on the symptom rarely creates lasting improvement.
The owners who achieve the greatest results stop asking:
“How do I fix this problem?”
And start asking:
“What is creating this problem?”
Because once you understand the cause, you can influence the outcome.
The visible problem gets your attention.
The underlying problem changes your business.
And that is often where meaningful progress begins.
What If You’re Wrong About the Problem?
Every business owner I’ve worked with could clearly explain the problem they believed was holding their business back.
Profit.
Cashflow.
Growth.
Recruitment.
Accountability.
Time.
Every single one of them was convinced they knew what the issue was.
And every single one of them was looking in the wrong place.
Not because they weren’t intelligent.
Not because they weren’t experienced.
Not because they didn’t care.
They were wrong because they were too close to it.
It’s incredibly difficult to see the wood for the trees when you’re standing in the middle of the forest.
When you’re dealing with the same people, the same problems and the same pressures every day, certain things become normal.
You stop questioning them.
You stop noticing them.
You start assuming that’s just the way business works.
The very thing holding the business back can be sitting in plain sight yet remain completely invisible to the person living with it every day.
That’s why every professional sports team has a coach.
It’s why businesses have non-executive directors.
It’s why companies bring in consultants and advisers.
Not because they’re smarter.
Not because they know your business better.
But because they can see what you can’t.
They aren’t standing in the middle of the forest.
They’re looking at it from the outside.
The question isn’t whether you need Andy Walter.
The question is whether you need somebody to challenge your assumptions and help you identify the real problem.
If that person isn’t me, who is it?
Because continuing to solve the symptom rarely fixes the cause.
If you’d like to discover where your business may be relying too heavily on you, where hidden bottlenecks may be limiting growth or where the real causes of your frustrations might be hiding, complete the Owner Bottleneck Review.
Because the problem you can see is rarely the problem holding your business back.
The real question is:
What problem are you actually trying to solve?
By Andy Walter
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