You Hired the Right Person for the Wrong Problem

She was the third hire in two years, and she was good. References checked out, she interviewed well, her portfolio was immaculate, and you had a good feeling. She sends the work back before it's finished, and attached are questions you've already answered for her once. And you don't say anything. You fix it yourself, you tell her it's fine, and then you sit there wondering why you keep doing this.

You've been telling yourself the same three things.

1. You are not good at hiring the right people.
2. You don't know how to delegate properly.
3. This must be a YOU problem because it keeps happening. Different hire, same issue.

I've reviewed 1,114 minutes of recorded calls with founders saying some version of that to me, and every single one of them was wrong.

Three problems, one symptom

There are three different reasons this happens, and the situation looks the same in all three. Fix the wrong one and nothing changes. But the core of your issue is one of the three below:

1. A people problem

She cannot do this job at the level you need. It happens, but it's rare, and it's the first place almost everybody starts pointing fingers.

2. A systems problem

What she needs to know lives in your head, your sent folder, or a conversation she wasn't in. She's guessing. Guessing comes back to you as questions.

3. A structure problem

She knows exactly what to do, and she's not allowed to decide. Nothing written down about what's hers to own, so it all routes back to you by default.

Hiring again only fixes the first one, and that only works if that is actually the source of your problem. It does nothing for the other two, and that's why the third hire feels like a continuous loop of hiring the wrong people.

What it looks like when you get it right

I worked with a founder running a 900-person company who was convinced she needed to hire. Everything still came through her, and she figured she just didn't have the right people yet.

It wasn't a people problem. Nobody under her had the authority to decide anything, so the work had nowhere else to go but back to her desk. We redesigned the org chart first. Then she made one hire, and that one stuck.

Same woman, same instinct to hire. Different diagnosis, different outcome.

Why we go straight to blaming ourselves

Blaming yourself or even someone else is the fastest answer available. It's also the only one that never makes you look at the business.

I built an agency to multi-six figures, convinced I was the common denominator in everything that didn't work. I got diagnosed with ADHD at 33 and with autism at 39, so by the time anybody handed me the language for how my brain actually runs, I'd already built a whole company on the theory that I was the problem in it.

That theory costs real money, real time, and a mental load you're exhausted from carrying.

Just hear me out, because the fix is one question

Of course she knew the task because you told her the task. That's not the core issue here.

The issue can be found in the moment she stopped and came to you. So take the last thing that bounced back and ask: Why did she stop?

• She didn't know what you'd want in that specific situation. Not the job, the judgment call inside the job. That standard lives in your head and has never come out of it. Systems problem. Capture one decision, don't hire.
• She knew what you'd want and wasn't sure she was allowed to choose it. She stopped to cover herself, not because she was lost but because she was unsure. Structure problem.
• She knew she was allowed; she made the call, you gave her feedback, and it keeps happening anyway. Now it's a people problem, and now hiring is the right move.

Most founders have never run that sequence. We skip to the third answer because it's the only one anybody talks about.

One symptom, three very different bills

A people problem costs you one hire. A systems problem costs you that salary over and over, because the next person walks into the same hidden issue. A structure problem costs you your afternoons for as long as you own this business. You're paying one of those right now, and I'd bet money it isn't the one you think.

I dare you to find out which one it is

Here's what I want you to take from this. Three failed hires are not a verdict on you. It's a symptom, and symptoms have causes, and causes can be fixed. Take the last three things that bounced back to you this month and run them through that question. Not your whole business, just three things.

I know this is new for you, so I built you something to help. It's a free diagnostic that asks how work actually moves through your business and then gives you a ruling: people, systems, or structure, and where it's costing you the most. In a few minutes, you get an answer instead of a score.

Take it at coreadvisorygrp.co/opsmap.

Knowing which problem you have before you spend another dollar solving the wrong one, that's your biggest flex as a CEO.

Related articles by Latrice Prater:

Why Talented Teams Still Underperform

Five Handoffs Where Your Revenue Secretly Disappears

Three Insights That Reveal Why Founders Become the System’s Stabilizing Force