Zoom Out to Zoom In: Getting to the root cause of your people challenges
Why do attempts to improve culture or employee performance so often fail?
Managers underperform, so you send them on a training course. Turnover spikes, so you issue a retention bonus. Strategy execution stalls, so you deploy another internal communications plan.
Yet, a month or two later, the exact same problems resurface. Small, temporary improvements fade, leaving leadership with change fatigue and wasted budgets.
Why are these tactical interventions so ineffective?
At SaltX, we believe the problem lies in how the challenge is diagnosed. Many organisations often treat surface-level symptoms as isolated problems. In reality, presenting people challenges are signals of deeper structural, operational, or cultural friction within your organisational system.
Executive Summary
The failure pattern: Deploying point solutions (workshops, bonuses, comms plans) treats symptoms without fixing the root cause, leading to recurring performance dips.
The systemic perspective: Surface challenges, like burnout, turnover, or stalled execution, are signals of deeper underlying root causes.
The commercial ROI: Resolving root causes across the organisational system unlocks engagement, driving up to a 3% revenue increase for every 5% gain in engagement.
Symptoms vs. signals: uncovering the real root causes
Consider a mechanic listening to a clanking noise in a car's wheel arch. The noise is a horrible symptom, but applying soundproofing wouldn't make the car safer—it's the failing ball joints that need fixing.
Similarly, an engineer suffering from daily back pain could take anti-inflammatories every morning. The pain vanishes temporarily, but returns the moment they sit in their poorly designed company van seat. Until you replace the seat, the pain will persist. (True story!)
In organisations, surface solutions are the corporate equivalent of taking painkillers for a bad seat.
Treating the symptoms
Surface symptom identified
Deploy tactical fix
Problem returns
Treats the immediate friction, but leaves the underlying operational flaw intact.
Symptoms as signals
Symptom is systemic signal
Root cause diagnostic
Permanent commercial ROI
Removes the operational friction at the source, unlocking workforce capability and long-term business performance.
What’s really behind the trend of key hires leaving? It could be that they’re not experiencing what they were expecting at recruitment and onboarding. Or it could be that they don’t see themselves developing any more with you. A retention bonus won’t fix it.
What’s behind the low manager engagement scores? It could be that leaders they report to aren’t giving them enough autonomy. Or it could be that scope creep has made roles practically impossible. Another manager training course won’t help much.
What’s behind the strategy not really landing? It could be that people don’t really have belief in the plan or trust the senior team. Or it could be that the message has been watered down as it moved down through the organisation. A comms plan alone won’t solve it.
Examples of symptom vs. root cause diagnostic matrix
Presenting symptom | Typical surface solution (fails or limited success) | The possible root cause | Example SaltX systemic solution
|
Key hires quitting early | Retention bonuses | Expectations mismatch & clear progression gaps | Onboarding architecture & development design |
Manager burnout | Resilience or leadership courses | Excessive scope creep & lack of autonomy | Role redesign, governance realignment, ELT development. |
Stalled strategy execution | Heavier internal comms plans | Executive team misalignment & lack of strategic trust | Senior leadership alignment & narrative design |
The financial upside: Unlocking hidden commercial value
Getting to the root cause does more than just stop the immediate pain—it unlocks systemic energy and commercial performance across your workforce.
Research proves that resolving organisational friction directly impacts engagement:
Revenue Expansion: An incremental 5% increase in workforce engagement drives a 3% increase in revenue (Aon Hewitt).
Cost Reduction: Tackling root causes reduces voluntary attrition by up to 40% and decreases sick days by 56% (Gallup / Engage for Success).
When you fix the underlying system, every part of the organisation performs better. Explore the full commercial breakdown in our analysis of The Culture Business Case.
How to find the root cause. Zoom out to zoom back in.
To get to the root cause of presenting people challenges, you need to step back and see the your people and all the parts of the organisation they interact with as an interconnected system. We use our Tube Map model and diagnostic to rapidly review what is happening across the system, which not only uncovers the root cause of challenges but also identifies the interrelated issues you may not even be aware of.
For example, the presenting issue might be that managers aren’t meeting the expected performance targets but by looking at the whole, we see that there’s strategic misalignment in the extended leadership team causing confusion and a lack of clarity for managers. Another manager training course, while nice to have, won’t fix that. It’s the ELT we need to look at, perhaps the top team too, and certainly the teams downstream of managers.
Looking at the whole doesn’t need to take months. We begin all our engagements by carrying out our diagnostic, tuned to the organisation we’re working with, as a core part of our research phase.
Ultimately, by zooming out and seeing the big picture we can zoom back in and identify the most powerful people-related lever, to not only fix the presenting problem but to unlock even greater value across your organisation, which you’ll see in the commercials.
Get in touch to start a conversation about the signals in your organisation. Together, we can get to the root cause and unlock hidden value.
