If You Think Your Employees Are the Problem, the Problem Is Likely You
It’s a line I hear repeatedly from business owners and managers, especially those running small-to-medium-sized entrepreneurial companies: “Business would be great… if it weren’t for the employees.” It is a sentiment often said in jest, but there is truth in jest.
My colleague recently spoke with the owner of a heating and air conditioning business who summed it up this way:
“My top three problems are employees, employees, and employees.”
It’s a frustrating refrain—but here’s the hard truth: your employees are not the problem; they’re presenting a symptom of a deeper problem.
When leaders tell me that their people are lazy, disengaged, or unreliable, what they’re really describing is a deeper issue with leadership, culture, or systems. People are simply reflecting what’s already broken upstream.
The Symptom vs. The Root Cause
When a business owner says, “My employees want to be paid more and work less,” they’re not naming the root cause—they’re acknowledging a symptom. But a symptom of what? A symptom that something is wrong; they are not happy so they require more money in order to bear the difficulties of remaining in an organization that isn’t fulfilling. There are only two categories of possibilities, each with their own root causes. Either the problem truly is the employee, or it is not.
In the rare cases where the employee actually is a problem, I will still aver that the root cause is still something deeper and more closely related to leadership.
Wrong people: you have the wrong people on the team who know the mission, vision, and core values of the company but do not agree nor care.
Solution: This is the easiest and clearest situation. If an employee does not conduct themselves in accordance with your core values some to most of the time, remove these people from your organization as quickly as possible. They are a cancer not worth keeping around risking the infection of others on the team. If you don’t have clearly documented, communicated, and understood mission, vision, and core values, then start there.
Poor hiring practices: you don’t have a process for hiring people who are aligned to your organization.
Solution: I will recommend a simple hiring process that has served me well over the years in a subsequent article. But until then, adopt an interviewing heuristic that you can conduct consistently and reliably to improve your chances of hiring the right kinds of people to your culture. Protect your culture (assuming its good and what you want) with everything you have. Know the kinds of people you want on your team and start with that. Then, make sure you have a clear job description and skill requirements. Lastly, know what success looks like with 30/60/90 day benchmarks.
Wrong seats: you have the right people, but you’ve positioned them in the wrong seats.
Solution: use the Right People, Right Seats methodology from the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). Do they get it, want it, and have the capacity (upside) to do the work? All three have to be present. If there is a current gap between their competency and the requirement of the position, then create a plan to bridge that gap in a reasonable amount of time. Just having a plan will increase employee engagement.
Lack of Purpose: the employee - and likely the organization - lacks a clear purpose, the “why”. It is difficult to have meaning in a job if the individual cannot answer the question, “Why do I get up in the morning and come to work?” (aside from a paycheck).
Solution: make it abundantly clear what the purpose of the organization is - the why of the organization’s existence - and how it benefits society at large. Ask employees to align with the company’s why and encourage them to determine their own why that is closely aligned - or at least not contradictory - to the greater purpose.
Lack of Clarity or Alignment: it is unclear to the employee how their work aligns and ladders up to the goals of the team, department, and company as a whole.
Solution: make it abundantly clear how important each and every individual is to the whole of the team, department, and company. Reward employees for doing the things that move the organization towards its goals. Measure success and manage to it at every opportunity. If you unable to do so, then the position may not be worth having, and reassign the individual to a position that is more valuable to the company.
Lack of Trust: the employees does not feel like they have the autonomy or respect to do what is best for them and the organization, despite understanding all of the above. Micromanagement, suspicion-based questions, second-guessing, rework, and poor delegation could all be culprits.
Solution: give employees the room to succeed. Read https://www.hartberggrowth.com/blog/the-speed-of-trust-in-small-business for more tips.
Poor valuation/motivation/rewards system: employees do not feel valued for their work. Motivations are not understood and rewards are ineffective.
Solution: ask! Ask employees what motivates them and how they like to be rewarded. Actually listen. Write it down, keep an employee file, and reference it regularly. Rewarding someone in their preferred methodology multiplies the impact. Cold hard cash is always a safe bet for most employees, but sometimes a half-day off to be with friends or family is more impactful to a person and less costly to a business.
Employees Are Your Greatest Asset—and Your Biggest Opportunity
The moment you stop viewing employees as a cost or a burden and start seeing them as your greatest untapped opportunity, everything changes.
You begin asking different questions.
You start diagnosing problems instead of reacting to symptoms.
You build trust, alignment, and momentum that compound like interest..
Here’s how:
Get Curious Before You Get Critical.
Use the Socratic method to uncover what’s really going on.
Ask:
“Tell me more about why you feel that way.”
“What do you mean when you say that?”
“What would success look like if you could wave a magic wand?”
Curiosity builds trust. Suspicion kills it.
Fix Systems, Not People.
Before blaming a person, evaluate the process.
Most “people problems” are actually system problems—misaligned expectations, unclear roles, or inconsistent accountability. One of the tenants of systems theory is that the problem does not lie within one or another person, the problem often lies in the relationship between people. The more people involved, the more chances there are for problems and the more complex the system gets. Finding a root cause can be more challenging in these cases - which is why its helpful to build scaffolding and take a structuralists approach to team organization - to create some order to the chaos.
Invest in Organizational Health.
High trust, clarity of purpose, and strong culture create high performance. Low trust is like a tax—everything costs more and takes longer. High trust is like a dividend—everything moves faster and costs less. A quick way to determine organizational trust is to analyze your leadership team meetings:
Do they start and end on time?
Is there healthy conflict?
Is everyone contributing or is one person dominating?
Is there cross-functional collaboration?
Is there accountability and follow-through?
Is there joy?
Do issues get resolved relatively quickly?
Are there “real meetings” on the side after the meetings?
The Real Leadership Challenge
If you say your employees are your biggest problem, it’s time to look in the mirror.
At Hartberg Growth Advisors, we help business owners and executives get honest about what’s really holding them back—and build healthy systems, clear culture, and aligned teams that perform with purpose.
Because your people likely aren’t the problem - or at least the only problem.
Your leadership, your clarity, and your systems are.
And the good news? All of those can be fixed.
→ Let’s start a conversation about your organization’s health.
