Now That You Can See It — Here's How to Sort It

A simple lens for making sense of what you're observing

A few weeks ago, I wrote about curiosity; specifically, about the practice of going to where the work happens and observing with genuine openness instead of judgment. The response was something I didn't expect. Messages, mostly some version of the same thing: "Yes. But then what? I went looking, and now I'm staring at a wall of problems, and I don't know where to begin."

I hear you. And I want to be honest with you: visibility alone is not the gift. It's the first step toward the gift. The gift is knowing what to do with what you see. So, let's talk about that.

Visibility without a framework is just more noise. The lens is what turns what you observe into something you can actually work with.

Start By Sorting, Not Solving

When you step into the reality of your operation with open eyes, you don't see one problem. You see a tangle of them and your instinct is usually to grab the one that's closest, loudest, or most irritating. That's human. But it's rarely strategic.

Before you reach for a solution, reach for a sorting mechanism. Here's the one I come back to constantly, with clients across industries: every operational problem you encounter belongs to one of four categories.

Process. This is how the work flows or doesn't. Redundant steps, unclear handoffs, approvals that create bottlenecks, rework that cycles through the same hands three times. The giveaway language: "we've always done it this way," "I'm not sure who owns that step," or "it just takes a long time." Process issues are often hiding in plain sight, so normalized that no one questions them anymore.

People. This isn't about blaming individuals. It's about asking whether the people doing the work have what they need to succeed; clear expectations, the right skills, enough psychological safety to flag a problem before it becomes a crisis, and feedback loops that actually work. When talented people are producing inconsistent results, this is usually where you look.

Systems. The technology, tools, and platforms your team depends on or works around. Shadow spreadsheets are a flashing signal. So is duplicate data entry, manual steps that a system should be automating, or tools that don't talk to each other. If your people are compensating for their technology, you have a systems issue and it's costing you more than you think.

Data. The information your organization uses to make decisions. Is it accurate? Is it timely? Do the people who need it have access to it and do they trust it? Bad data doesn't just produce bad reports. It produces bad strategy. I'd argue that a data trust problem is one of the most quietly destructive forces in any organization, because it creates doubt, and doubt creates paralysis.

You stop seeing 'everything is broken' and start seeing a pattern. That's the moment strategy becomes possible.

What This Looks Like in Practice

I was working with a supply chain client not long ago, an organization that had been struggling for months with delays, frustrated stakeholders, and a leadership team that felt like they were constantly putting out fires. When I asked them to describe the problem, I got several different answers.

So, we slowed down. We spent a half-day in a working session together, walking through their current-state process and placing what we observed into these four buckets. Not solving. Not debating. Just sorting.

By the end of the session, the wall of problems had organized itself into something manageable: a cluster of process issues around approval routing, a people issue involving unclear ownership at a critical handoff, and a data issue their reporting wasn't syncing in real time, so decisions were being made on information that was already a week old.

That session didn't fix anything. But it changed everything, because the team could suddenly see their situation clearly for the first time. And from that clarity, they could start having a real conversation about what to address first and why.

The Sorting Is Just the Beginning

Once you've got your problems organized into buckets, you'll likely notice something: not all buckets are created equal. Some problems are costing you quietly in the background. Others are hemorrhaging time, money, and morale in ways that are hiding in plain sight.

That's where the next question comes in and it's one most leaders skip straight past: how do you decide which problem to tackle first?

This diagnostic process; the sorting, the sense-making, the conversation about what it all means is exactly the kind of work we do at SimplexityPM. If you're curious what it could look like for your organization, let’s chat!

In my next article, I'll walk through a tool I use with clients to quantify the real cost of operational problems, so you can prioritize with intention instead of instinct. It's practical, it's accessible, and it will change how you think about where your energy goes.

Because the leaders who make the most meaningful progress aren't the ones who move fastest. They're the ones who move in the right direction first.