Diagnostic Taxonomy
The symptom is real.
The cause is usually somewhere else.
A public map of the complaints leaders actually say out loud, and the root cause each one usually traces to. Pick the one that sounds like your week.
"I'm not cut out to be a leader"
promoted to manager not ready / accidental manager
"Three companies, three ways of selling"
acquired companies still operate separately / integration sales process not aligned
"We rolled out AI and nothing really changed"
AI rollout no results / we bought AI tools and nothing changed
"Everyone is busy but the pipeline is thin"
team is busy but no pipeline / lots of activity no opportunities
"I can't trust the forecast"
sales forecast never accurate / can't trust the forecast
"We cannot seem to win the bigger deals"
cannot win enterprise deals / moving upmarket deals stall
"We're constantly firefighting"
team always firefighting / how to stop constant firefighting
"We bought them to cross-sell and it has not happened"
acquisition cross-sell not happening / synergies never materialised
"The customers are loyal to him, not to us"
customers loyal to previous owner after acquisition / founder holds the relationships
"I'm drowning, heading for burnout"
how to stop feeling overwhelmed at work / why am I burning out when I work this hard
"We have an execution problem"
why can't my team execute / execution problem vs alignment problem
"The team can't function without me"
founder bottleneck / everything goes through me how to delegate
"We tried OKRs and it didn't stick"
why didn't OKRs stick / our OKR rollout failed what framework should we try instead
"My leadership team isn't a team"
why doesn't my leadership team act like a team / how to fix silos and politics on my executive team
"Our comp plan is not competitive, our top people are leaving"
why are my best sales reps quitting for more money / how to stop losing good reps to competitor pay
"My managers don't coach"
why won't my managers coach their team / how to get sales managers to actually coach
"We spend on marketing and cannot tell if it works"
cannot tell if marketing is working / marketing spend no attribution
"We need more leads"
more leads but low win rate / why isn't more pipeline fixing revenue
"We have never had to go find customers before"
we have never had to prospect / how to start outbound when business always came to us
"We opened a new market and nothing is happening"
expanded into a new region and it is not working / new territory no traction
"We have a plan from the new owners and the team is going through the motions"
private equity value creation plan team not bought in / 100 day plan not working
"Almost all our business comes from one place"
all our business comes from one source / too dependent on one lead source
"If he left, the pipeline would leave with him"
all our sales depend on one person / key person risk sales relationships
"Referrals used to carry us and they have slowed"
referrals have dried up / referrals slowed down how to get more
"We keep customers but don't grow"
we keep customers but aren't growing / high retention but flat growth
"We are relaunching the program"
relaunching transformation program / second attempt at change program
"My team isn't accountable"
team not accountable / how to build accountability
"We bought the tool and nothing changed"
bought the tool nothing changed / CRM/software didn't fix anything
"Two of our companies are calling the same customer"
acquired companies competing for same customer / overlapping territory after acquisition
Not sure which one is really yours?
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