The Engineer’s Approach to Leadership: Fixing the System, Not the Symptoms

Most leadership problems aren't people problems—they're system problems wearing people-problem costumes.

I spent years as an engineer before moving into leadership, and honestly? That engineering brain has been my secret weapon.

Here's what I mean:

In engineering, when something breaks, we don't blame the server. We trace the workflow, check the connections, and find the root cause.

But in leadership? We're quick to point fingers:

"Marketing isn't communicating."
"IT is too slow."
"Sarah keeps dropping the ball."

I've been guilty of this too.

But here's what I've learned: People behave predictably inside predictable systems.

When tasks keep falling through the cracks, it's usually not a "Sarah problem"—it's a missing handoff, unclear ownership, or a broken process.

When teams move slowly, it's not laziness—it's bottlenecks, too much context switching, or tools that don't talk to each other.

Sound familiar?

As leaders, we get to choose: Fix the person, or fix the system that shapes their behavior.

One scales. One doesn't.

The solution? Treat your team like a system. Debug it like you would code. Find the root cause. And fix it.

Leadership is just engineering with humans involved.

What about you? What's one "people problem" you later discovered was actually a systems issue? Drop a comment—I'd love to hear your story.

And if this resonates, hit that repost button. Let's help more leaders think like engineers.

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