"The challenge that many of us who are helpful by nature run into is that oftentimes we start doing things when we notice that there's a problem and we want to help. And we don't recognize that by doing that, we are contributing to the continuation of the problem. You're talking about workarounds in systems. And every time you do something like that, every time you hide the fact that the system is not addressing whatever it's supposed to be addressing, that you are now guaranteeing that the system is not going to get fixed. That's the real problem with workarounds. As you said – you are hiding the problem. And it can feel horrible to not hide the problem, to use your metaphor, to let it bleed. And it's why one of the things that I have done a lot in organizations where we're we're working on systemic issues, and of course, as soon as we go in, we discover all of the workarounds that are allowing things to function as they can that that nobody wants to continue to do, and they feel like they have to. And whenever I ask questions about it, it's like, 'Well, if I did this, then that would cause this pain.' And I always tell them, you're not causing the problem, you're revealing that it's there. You're creating an opportunity now, for the group, for the system, for the organization to go, 'Oh, we thought that this was being handled by formal processes, by a good way of working...' The larger group is not aware. And that can be very, very, very painful and frustrating at first, but when it group gets good at that, when we stop hiding problems, we can develop the ability to actually address these things to make things function well again."
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