If you want your organisation to reflect, adapt and improve, the question is simple:

Are you doing the same?

Calling out where other people, teams and systems could improve is easy.

Acknowledging how your own assumptions, habits and decisions might be contributing to the very problems you’re seeing elsewhere takes courage.

Consider a CEO frustrated that their managers won’t make decisions without escalating everything.

The obvious response might be to invest in their decision-making capability, clarify their responsibilities or hold them more accountable.

But what if those same managers have learnt that decisions made without the CEO’s involvement are likely to be questioned, overturned or criticised?

Then escalating isn’t a capability problem. It’s the safest option they’ve got.

We’re all quick to blame someone or something else. But in my work, the CEO’s own behaviour often contributes to the very issue they’re trying to fix.

I’ve been managing people since 1987 and running a business built on naming what organisations fail to see since 2016. One thing I’m certain of is this: no one can see all their own blind spots. That includes me and every other CEO I know.

And if meaningful change is your objective, the shift needs to start with the person who parks closest to the staff entrance.

Not every problem needs a difficult conversation, a workshop or a review of policy and process.

Sometimes it needs someone prepared to ask the questions that aren’t being asked.

If it’s been a while since someone challenged the way you or your leadership team are looking at a problem, let’s spend some time doing exactly that.