Big idea #2: Problem solving integrity

Most leadership mistakes aren’t execution failures. They’re diagnosis failures.

I was fortunate enough to partner with Ron Heifetz across several years of leadership development program delivery and he calls this concept diagnostic integrity. I tend to think of it more plainly as problem solving integrity. The discipline to ask, with honesty, “what’s actually going on here?” before charging off to fix it.

This isn’t just about “de-biasing”. That’s the polite, corporate version. Everyone nods at it. No one really does it. And in any case, it misses the point. The issue isn’t just that we’re biased. It’s that we frame problems in ways that suit our expertise. We don’t just solve problems, we quietly redefine them into forms we know how to handle. And underneath that sits something deeper; we problem solve through the lens of our values, our preferences, and the kinds of answers we instinctively trust. What looks like objective diagnosis is often a reflection of who we are and what we’re comfortable solving.

What problem solving dis-integrity looks like

If you’re a strategy person, it’s a strategy problem.

If you’re a HR leader, it’s an operating model problem.

If you’re a CFO, it’s a cost discipline problem.

It’s framing and solving the kind of problem you already know how to solve.

None of that is conscious. It just happens. Quietly. Efficiently. So convincingly.

Then layer on what happens as you get promoted. Your role, increasingly, is to solve more complex problems. People look to you for answers. You start to believe that your value is having those answers. By the time you’re running something meaningful, there’s an unspoken contract; you’re the most capable problem solver in the room.

Except the opposite is often true.

The more senior you get, the further you are from the problem. You’re less exposed to customers. Less exposed to the detail. More reliant on filtered information and second-hand narratives. And yet, you are expected to be more confident in your diagnosis.

That’s the trap.

This is not easy

We like to think we’re rational operators. We’re not. We are far more willing to interrogate perspectives that feel adjacent to our own than ones that challenge how we see the world.

I saw this play out in a large organisation going through an important culture transformation. The outgoing CEO had spent years pushing the organisation toward greater inclusion. More voices at the table. More space for dissent. It was framed as the next stage of maturity, and for a time, it worked. Engagement lifted. People felt heard.

The incoming CEO looked at the same organisation and came to a very different diagnosis. The issue, in his view, wasn’t inclusion. It was that the organisation had lost its edge. Too many decisions by consensus. Standards had become uneven. The missing ingredient wasn’t voice. It was operational excellence.

Same organisation. Same data. Two entirely different diagnoses, each shaped by a different set of CEO values.

The result was predictable. The organisation split along philosophical lines. One group saw the new direction as a necessary correction. Another saw it as a regression. Both believed they were defending the “right” culture.

What was missing, in the middle of that, was a more honest diagnostic question; what is actually happening here, independent of our preferences? Where has inclusion helped? Where has it diluted accountability? Where has the push for excellence sharpened performance, and where has it shut down voices we still need to hear?

Those are harder questions. They require you to step into uncertainty, territory you may not like, and stay there long enough to learn from it.

This is where great leadership starts to look different

I saw one CEO handle this well. In workshops he would start with, “This is how I’m seeing the problem, but…” and then list out, almost methodically, why his view might be flawed for this context. “I’m not close to customers. I’ve been in the industry too long. I have a bias toward what’s worked before.” It wasn’t performative. It created space for better thinking.

Another CEO had a simpler line, she would pose the question “If we imagined someone who disagreed with all of us, what would they say?” It was a way of forcing the room out of its own consensus.

An old school friend is one of the nation’s most prominent fund managers. He has a psychologist on retainer. Not for support. For challenge. Every day, they work through his thinking and decision making. Where is ego creeping in? What disguised assumption is he holding? What narrative is he telling himself that might not be true?It’s not indulgent. It’s an edge.

Because in his world, the cost of being wrong isn’t just a bad decision. It compounds.

That’s problem solving integrity in practice. Not removing bias entirely. That’s unrealistic. But building a system around yourself that exposes it before it does damage.

Most leaders don’t do this. So they act. Decisively. On the wrong problem.

And even when leaders try to broaden their view, there’s a deeper constraint that’s rarely acknowledged; it’s hard to diagnose a problem from the standpoint of someone whose values you don’t share. Harder still if it’s a group you instinctively dismiss or deeply disagree with.

For most executives, that’s the part that’s missing. They don’t lack intelligence. Or experience. Or effort. What they lack is a mechanism to interrogate their own framing before it turns into action. And that’s where this becomes less about skill and more about mindset. You don’t solve this by learning better problem-solving tools. You solve it by shifting your identity.

From: I am here to produce the answer

To: I am here to facilitate the conditions for the right answer to emerge

That’s a very different posture. It assumes the best thinking is not in your head. It’s distributed across the organisation. Your role is to surface it, test it, and make sense of it. Not override it. It’s slower at the start. It’s uncomfortable. It requires you to let go of the idea that you’re the smartest person in the room. But it dramatically reduces the risk of solving the wrong problem with great confidence.

This is also where executive coaching, done properly, has real value. Not as advice. Not as another opinion. But as one of the few places where a senior leader can have their thinking challenged without consequence. Where someone can ask, plainly, “are you sure that’s the problem?” and stay with that question longer than most organisations will tolerate.

Because once you see how often leaders get this wrong, you start to realise: execution isn’t the bottleneck. Diagnosis is.