The real obstacles to a company’s growth are often hard to identify. They are frequently issues that affect multiple areas of the company. They may look like seemingly simple issues at first. But once you’ve solved the superficial problems, there’s still no relief. That’s because you didn’t get to the heart of the underlying issue. You haven’t yet pulled that weed out by its roots.

The first, and major, step in solving these more serious, hidden issues, is identifying them. You and your leadership team need to set aside time to delve deeper into recurring issues rather than just putting out the current fires and moving on. You and the team need to think long and hard about the symptoms – not always clearly related – and see if you can identify the underlying cause. Without time for reflection and analysis, you’ll just keep running around solving the same problems on a different day.

The second step in solving these deeper issues is getting alignment within your leadership team as to what the real problems are and which ones to tackle first. Once you’ve identified and agreed on the root issues, you need a strategy on how to fix them. Your company will not be able to resolve and move past these obstacles if you don’t have buy in and commitment from the whole team on which issues to address and how to handle them.

Alignment Exercise:
We’ve compiled a list of the 27 most common UNDERLYING challenges that companies face. Click here to download it. Take a good look at it. What are the Top 5 challenges YOUR company faces? Then ask each member of your leadership team to do the same. Are you all in agreement? Are there issues on some of your team’s lists that you didn’t identify yourself? Have a discussion about these challenges and be honest about where your company is today. Come to agreement on your Top 5 most-pressing issues and develop a plan to resolve them. It’s the most important step you can take to make 2018 your best year yet.