5 Types of Business Problems That Require More Than Just Business Solutions

Consider this familiar scenario: You have a business problem that you need to solve. You do your homework, come up with a plan and do everything you’re supposed to do…and still things don’t work out. 

In the rush to find a solution, you overlooked important information. You thought you had it all figured out, but you succumbed to decision-making biases. You worked weekends, but that extra effort didn’t change the outcome. You focused on the wrong problem or fell back on old habits. 

What’s really going on? 

We often think that business problems are just a matter of implementing objective inputs and outputs. We believe success should naturally flow from taking the right steps. But it’s also important to check what’s going on below the surface since certain business problems are driven by long-established emotional and relational patterns. 

In this article, I will focus on an oft-overlooked aspect of problem-solving in business—emotional patterns that create them in the first place. In my work with business owners and leaders, I often see negative emotional patterns confused with business problems. My clients have tried every tool in their toolkit to turn things around to no avail. To move past these damaging problems, we must address the underlying patterns driving them. 

First, let’s examine the solution-fixation trap and why spending more time gathering information results in better problem-solving. 

The Solution-Fixation Trap 

We’ve all had the experience of rushing to find a solution to a problem—and, in the process, missing out on essential information. The consequences are many: we lose time, money, and momentum. 

A lot of business owners and leaders fall into this solution-fixation trap. They notice a business problem, rush to fix it with a surface-level solution, and miss out on crucial information that could have led to a better outcome. 

Research shows that the way high-performing teams and low-performing teams problem solve is different. In one study, researchers mapped out the problem-solving process that 28 teams used to make decisions. They identified four phases of decision-making: information processing, solution exploration, confirmation, and executive action. They designated a fifth “phase” as unorganized action. 

Overall, all teams shared a similar process for problem-solving. They gathered and shared information, explored possible solutions, considered additional information, and explored available solutions. Once they identified the right solution, they took steps to implement it. 

Importantly, the high-performing teams spent much more time on processing information, while the low-performing teams fixated on debating solutions. In other words, the low-performing teams got stuck in the solution-fixation trap. This approach limited their ability to evaluate all relevant information, which, in turn, led to poor outcomes. What’s interesting is that the low-performing teams that rushed to debate solutions did not finish the task any faster than the high-performing teams.

We need to realize that some of the most common and intractable business problems often require much more than a business solution. A deep dive into the underlying emotional or psychological patterns could help pinpoint an emotional source of the problem—past trauma or current stressors—and the most appropriate solution. 

How to do that? The Deep Growth method is a way to distinguish emotional patterns from other business problems. With this additional information, you are more likely to identify long-term solutions and effective strategies that will turn things around. 

So, let’s look at five types of business problems rooted in negative emotional patterns. 

The Five Types

Playing Small 

In my book How to Love your Business, I share a story about Becky who started a consulting business.  Early in life, she learned to shrink to feel safe. She was taller than her peers and felt uncomfortable standing out and taking up space. That negative emotional habit continued into her adult life. 

After starting her consulting business, however, Becky stepped out and started taking risks. During the third year, however, she hit a rough patch. She was exhausted, depleted and not making progress toward what she wanted in life. An objective business solution seems obvious here: “Becky needs to hire help” or “Becky should raise her prices” or even “Becky needs a different business model.” 

But it’s not so simple. Becky is savvy. If she could have solved this challenge with an objective business decision, she would have. Instead, the first step was to go deep and make the unconscious conscious. Becky’s business growth required self-knowledge. She needed to get comfortable taking up space, both personally and in the world of business. She needed to stop playing small. That is what we mean by Deep Growth. 

Other symptoms of playing small include difficulty finding product-market fit, ineffective sales messaging and an inability to secure investors or partners. Playing small often manifests as a low tolerance for risk. Whether it’s risking rejection or failure, you bet this fear of the unknown can stop business leaders in their tracks. 

For instance, hiring a new team member is a risk. But that hire could be the difference between being able to fulfill a large holiday order comfortably or running yourself into the ground trying. Putting on a big event is a risk. But that event could be the difference between securing a year’s worth of contracts in a single evening and scraping by for the next twelve months. 

Underpricing is another way playing small can show up. Underselling your product or service causes financial strain and keeps you working harder than you need to. Similarly, playing small can appear as under promising. In this case, you “stay safe” by avoiding the risk of promising too much. But you lose out on contracts because potential clients go with someone promising more. 

A common mistake is to approach these issues solely as business problems. We analyze budgets, strategize hiring processes, raise prices, or punch up proposals. We then justify playing small with explanations such as: we want to stay lean and agile, or we are creating a sustainable business or a “just enough” business. 

But time and time again, I see playing small for what it is—an emotional rut that keeps people from taking up space or taking a risk. Only the deeper growth that happens when we integrate emotional context into our problem-solving process can lead to the profound change we desire. 

Overdelivering 

One client I worked with named Amanda grew up in a tough situation. From the age of six, she was responsible for caring for herself and her younger sister. Since Amanda didn’t get any acknowledgment at home from her parents, she sought recognition at school through high achievement.  Later, she did the same thing in her career and when she started her own business. 

For Amanda, overdelivering was a well-worn path. She tried to wow clients with incredible results and productivity, working herself into the ground. Again, a consultant might look at Amanda’s situation and suggest reworking how she put together proposals, increasing her prices, or managing her projects differently. But even when Amanda did all those things, the emotional pattern underlying her business problems still had a hold on her. 

Like playing small, overdelivering can manifest in various business problems. It can turn a manageable workload into a need for regular all-nighters. It can lead to financial stress because the amount of work you’re doing doesn’t match the revenue you’re generating. And it can lead to a calendar with no time for family, friends, or leisure activities. 

On the surface, these issues seem to have a business solution—a more streamlined project management process, higher prices, or stricter boundaries on meetings. However, none of those solutions address the emotional state that created the problem in the first place. 

Other things that can lead to overdelivering include negative socialization and collective trauma. If your gender, race, disability, class, or identity have subjected you to systemic harm and negative social messaging, it’s easy to recreate those patterns in your work life. 

The Deep Growth approach helps us all become more aware of our social conditioning, trauma, and personal experience so that we can manage expectations and rein in the impulse to compulsively prove ourselves to others. 

Project Management and Productivity Challenges

“Getting stuff done” might seem like the most straightforward of all business problems to solve—make a plan, set your deadlines, and establish consequences for not following through. However, project management and productivity challenges often have their roots in emotional context. 

Mary’s story is a familiar one. She worked for a hypercritical, micromanaging, and unpredictable boss. To survive in that environment, she learned to emotionally manage her boss and cope with the stress. When she started running her own business, she found herself mimicking that toxic behavior. 

Rather than creating stable plans and predictable expectations for her team, she created chaos. She made a decision one day, only to change her mind the next. She gave instructions to her team at the start of a project, only to reverse course once it got underway. 

On the surface, these challenges look like problems with communication, execution, and decision-making. And to an extent, they are. But we can’t solve them simply by switching project management apps, having more frequent meetings, or even developing better standard operating procedures. And yet, that’s exactly how these business problems are typically addressed. 

Before we pursue a solution, it’s important to understand the emotional context of the problem. To do so, start by asking yourself, “When have I experienced this kind of chaos before? What did I learn from it?” or “How has creating a chaotic environment benefited me in the past?” Like Mary, adapting to, or even creating, chaos can be a coping mechanism for stressful situations. The same is true for procrastination, rigidly following instructions, or deferring to a micromanager. 

Deep Growth won’t create a work environment free from uncertainty or rapidly changing priorities. But it does give us an idea about how we deal with those conditions, including how we manage projects and work toward goals. 

People Management 

Every business, whether it sells services or products, is still a business about people. And managing those people is perhaps the most obvious area of a business to be impacted by emotional context. And yet, for most managers, that is the last place they look to for a solution.  

No doubt, managing people is a difficult job. And one we rarely train for. Managers tend to blame others for problems rather than investigate how their own management style might create friction. 

It’s entirely possible that a team member isn’t a good fit for the job. However, it’s also likely that “people problems” are actually management problems. This misdiagnosis becomes apparent when you let go of one team member, hire another, and see the same issues resurface. That process can repeat itself until the manager starts asking the million-dollar question: how am I contributing to the problem? 

These recurring people problems should be a signal to check your own emotional landscape. Are you recreating old patterns or habits? Are you expecting your team members to act in a certain way based on your previous work experience? Are you trying to hire your way out of an emotional challenge that you haven’t yet dealt with yourself? 

Even if it turns out that a team member isn’t a good fit, taking stock of how you might be contributing to the problem is a crucial part of deciding how to improve their performance or let them go. 

Practicing Deep Growth not only provides insight into the roots of your own emotional context but also the emotional context of those you work with. Deep Growth creates the conditions for true empathy and personal connection. 

Stagnant Growth                 

Finally, all the business problems I’ve described above can contribute to stagnant growth. Whenever I see someone struggling with this problem, I know that they will pursue a marketing or sales option rather than examine the emotional context holding the business back. 

Trying to solve a growth problem with a marketing or sales solution makes sense—but often fails to account for how emotional challenges exacerbate operational limitations. It’s impossible to grow a business beyond its operational capacity. And it’s impossible to sustainably grow operational capacity without addressing underlying emotional problems. What seems like the absence of growth is quite often the presence of deep, arresting friction on a social-emotional level. 

I do the work that I do because I have found this misdiagnosis to be so prevalent. There are various ways to ease this friction. Part of the solution requires understanding your individual makeup of past trauma, emotional patterns, and psychological habits. Another part of the solution is rooted in a thoughtful and nuanced approach to sustainability at work, guided by a framework that is trauma conscious. The benefits of doing this work is that Deep Growth happens on both a personal and an organizational level. 

Finally, I will share why the Deep Growth approach to decision-making and problem-solving is critical to moving past short-term reactionary solution seeking. 

Emotional Sustainability at Work and in Business 

In my book, I show you how to complete an Emotional Sustainability Plan—a core component of the Deep Growth framework. This plan outlines the ways in which you get in your own way (e.g., what your inner critic is most likely to nag at you about). It also describes concrete ways you will need to meet your needs at work—identifying your boundaries and creating procedures that uphold them. 

Your plan for emotional sustainability should also include how you can tap into available resources to disrupt, moderate, or reassess the emotional context in which you’re making business decisions. Those resources—including your skills, knowledge, mental models, and beliefs in both the professional and personal realms—are critical tools that give you a more nuanced perspective on the challenge you’re dealing with at any given time. 

Developing a proactive approach to emotional sustainability is also critical for avoiding the solution-fixation trap. It prompts you to gather and process more information—including information about the emotional context of any challenge—before jumping into possible solutions. 

I’ve seen how proactively planning for emotional sustainability at work can transform how people interact with their businesses or teams. They’re less likely to operate reactively and more likely to recognize business problems for what they often are—a manifestation of old patterns, trauma, or emotional context.

Once you understand what is driving your decisions, you really can change your business one small choice at a time.