As a CEO, it’s often impossible to “read the label from inside the jar,” leading many leaders to misdiagnose their business problems as tactical fires rather than systemic issues. Gwen Bortner joins Tonya Kubo to share her framework for moving past implicit biases and identifying the true root causes within an organization. By evaluating the four critical areas—people, priorities, processes, and performance indicators—business owners can stop applying Band-Aids to infections and start making high-leverage decisions. Whether it’s addressing misplaced loyalty in staffing or realizing that a “leads problem” is actually an expense issue, this conversation provides the diagnostic tools needed to lead with wisdom and clarity.

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The CEO’s Diagnostic: How To Tell What Your Business Actually Needs Next

Your business is constantly giving you information. It just doesn’t always speak in complete sentences and sometimes doesn’t even speak in fragments. In this episode, we are going to talk about how you can read your business like a system instead of reading it like a long list of to-dos. This way, you can identify the real issue quickly and make decisions with confidence. As always, I’m Tonya Kubo. I am here with my co-host, Gwen Bortner. Gwen, I know this is something that you deal with all the time. You have dealt with it for decades. I want you to kick us off and tell me why you think the average CEO misreads what their business needs.

The CEO’s Blind Spot: Implicit Bias And Internal Assumptions

There’s lots of reasons for this. First, we’ve talked about it before. You can’t read the label inside the jar. We’re often too close to things to be able to see the bigger picture of what’s going on. One of the other things that we don’t talk about nearly as much is we have inherent assumptions. That are so inherent we don’t know they are assumptions. We take them as facts.

 

 

It’s the very definition of implicit bias. If you knew you had it, it wouldn’t be implicit.

Exactly. We have those inherent assumptions and these implicit biases that are directing choices, thoughts and behaviors that we can’t even see ourselves. It’s as you said, it’s the nature of the whole thing. We talked about this quite a bit privately and on this show of how often you’ll say something to me like, “No one else thinks that way.” I’m like, “What do you mean no one else thinks that way? Everyone thinks that way. It’s the most logical thing in the universe.” “You’re like, “No.”

Only to you, Gwen.

It’s not. It’s those kinds of issues that we are making choices, decisions, taking action, all of those based on those things. That becomes the biggest problem. The one I just said to me is the number one. That’s the biggest issue. Back to, “I can’t do it for myself either, even though I’m good at doing it for other people.” I can’t do it for myself.

For clarity, you’re saying the number one issue is you can’t read the label from inside the jar. You’re too close to the situation.

Diagnosing The Root Cause: Moving Beyond Tactical Band-Aids

I was going to say the assumption is implicit. Number two is you can’t read the label inside the jar, back to, you’re too close to things. The third is I think it’s so much easier to take actions on the things that are obvious. The things that are obvious usually are more tactical. Often, the tactical thing that we’re fixing is more like putting a Band-Aid on an infection. It will help it not get more infected but it’s not necessarily solving the infection.

Many tactical fixes are just Band-Aids on a deeper problem; they don’t solve the root issue. Share on X

It helps manage it a little bit, but it’s not getting to the problem. A lot of the time, the reason that we don’t see the infection is back to number one. We’re making assumptions to say, “It’s always been there. That’s the way it is. That’s just fine, or this is the only way we can do this. This is the only answer we’ve got.” To me, it’s those three things in that order. As I said, the assumption is the biggest issue because we can’t see it.

This is one of those things. Everyone’s all come across someone being like, “I don’t work with anyone outside of my business because they’re projecting all of their things on.” It’s like, “Yes, and.” I can see where you may have had that experience a lot because that does happen a lot out in the world. Outside perspective is always important. Maybe you don’t need it constantly. Maybe you don’t need it all the time. That outside perspective is important.

Back to, they need to understand you and your business enough for it to be valuable. As I said, it’s both you and your business. Most of the time, when you’re providing an outside perspective, I would say 75% or 80% of the time, it’s less about the business and it’s more about me that you’re giving the insight on. It’s not just like, “I know your business. I know what you’re doing.” You’ve got to have somebody that’s taking time to build a relationship with you.

It then gets to, we’re often too close to things to be able to see things clearly. That’s a little bit different. We tend to focus on the things that are most obvious because why would we not? Sometimes, they are the things that need to be fixed. I was using this example with someone that we keep wondering why there’s a fire starting in the corner. We don’t move the magnifying glass that catches the sun every day.

That’s a great analogy. I haven’t heard that one.

I know. It was a new one. I came up with it. I was proud of myself.

You should be.

It’s like, “We put the fire out.” “God, it started again?” There’s more going on here. That’s the other problem. We get focused on the big urgent thing and we miss the subtle things that are leading to the bigger urgent thing.

I was going to say because I see that a lot. I hear you talk about it all the time but I see it in your clients. I see my clients. I see it in my peers. That constantly falling victim to the fire. The true priorities what’s important constantly get on the back burner. This is how I always say about the days, bleeding into the weeks, bleeding into the months, and bleeding into the years. It’s New Year’s Eve and you haven’t crossed one thing off your very important to-do list for the year.

 

 

You’ve given us a good perspective on why CEOs misread the information their business is trying to give them. Even if it’s a business they have founded. Even if we’re talking about owner-operators, entrepreneurs, and solopreneurs. Now, I want to turn it to you. I want to ask, what is your approach to diagnosing a business’s problem? As the person who comes in from the outside. They have already said, “I know I can’t read the label from outside the jar.” Maybe they were like, “I read the label. I’m following the instructions. It’s just not doing the thing I expected to do.” You come in from the outside, what is your approach to diagnosing?

Do you have your contacts? This is where context matters because part of it is understanding where we are in the process. If the fire is going in the corner, we do need to get the fire out.

I want to take a step back from that piece. I know where you’re going and we’re going to get there but I mean the framework. Let me tell you what I think I’ve seen you do. You can tell me if what I see is what I think I see or if I’m running around with my own implicit bias here. I see people come to you with symptoms. I’ve got this problem. I’ve got that problem. We’ll just call it the lead problem because in marketing, this is my language. I throw the sports analogy, but you know I don’t do the sports ball.

They come to you and there’s these symptoms. “I have a lead problem,” and you’re like, “You’re not making any sales. You’re not doing this.” “I’m making sales. I’m doing this.” You’re like, “When was your last new client?” “I got a client yesterday,” and you’re like, “This doesn’t sound like a leap problem to me.” You point out that what they came to you with is like a symptom. You ask them these questions and then, undoubtedly, we get to the core issue or what ops people love to call the root cause. That root cause discovery.

Once you unearth that root cause, I feel like constraints are always in-depth coming up. They’re like, “If that’s a problem, I’m going to fix it here.” You’re like, “Oh, well.” Given what you’ve told me, it sounds like this has to get fixed. There’s a problem here. Maybe you don’t have enough staff over there or you’ve got staff who are focusing too much time on the symptom and not enough time on the root cause.

We focus on urgent problems and miss the subtle signals that created them. Share on X

You start listening to all these constraints that are in place. Once you have a picture of like, we have the root cause. Here are the constraints in place, then you start to say, “Given that information, it seems like you should start here. This is your point of highest leverage.” That’s the framework I see as you go about diagnosing. Am I missing something or does that sound about right? If it does sound right, tell us why it makes sense.

The Secret Juju: Connecting Invisible Dots Across The Business

Part of this, I’d love to say I know exactly how it happens every time, but I don’t. I’ll just call it my secret juju. You’re the one to help me identify that I often see several dots in a line. To the rest of the world, the dots don’t even exist. They’re just invisible. I’m always listening. Do you remember the old Sesame Street thing about one of these things doesn’t belong here?

I’ve got that song inside my head.

I’m always watching or listening to the thing that doesn’t quite belong. When I was four, I was good at what doesn’t belong here. Most four-year-olds are good with what doesn’t belong here. What’s the thing that’s not quite fitting into the picture the way that it’s supposed to? Often, I’m willing to look at the entire business.

Using your leads example. It’s like, let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about your finances, you’re this, you’re that, your people, your processes, your systems and your technology. Part of what’s a little different about where I come in and how I’m able to find it is, I’m not looking necessarily where the problem is manifesting.

Let’s just use the you and me example here. If you hire me now, you get a different experience. Let’s pretend you hire Tonya before she met Gwen. You hired Tonya eight years ago Tonya, and you’re talking to a marketing consultant. You tell me you have a leads problem. I’m going to investigate your marketing engine because that’s my area of expertise. You told me you have a leads problem. “I’m going to trust you to be the expert in your business.”

You go, “We can have that conversation.” You know enough about marketing to pull that thread. You then talk about finances, sales, fulfillment, and team. Even if they don’t have a team, you talk to them through all the functions of their business. Since they’re like a one-person show, is there a function of their business that’s been neglected? Is that what you’re talking about?

Exactly. I’m looking at all of the pieces because my experience over all of these decades at this point is rarely the root cause aligned with where the symptoms are showing up. Sometimes, it is. I can’t say it’s never that because that would not be true either. I would say it’s like the whole Pareto Principle 80/20 rule. That 80% of the time it’s sitting somewhere else. Often, where we want to find it is where we’re most comfortable fixing things.

The root cause rarely shows up where the symptoms are. Most of the time, it’s somewhere else. Share on X

If it’s a leads problem and we’ve functionally done well in our business because we’ve been able to sell things and whatnot. We then want to fix the marketing because it’s a leads problem. It’s a marketing problem. I want to fix the marketing. I’m making up this scenario. I don’t even have a real one in my head now.

Often, what we’ll find is like, “You see it as a leads problem because you’re not getting as much revenue as you want to have. You don’t have as much revenue as you want to have because you’re not able to cash flow the business. The reason you can’t cash flow the business is this expense problem that has nothing to do with marketing.” By asking that broader question and looking at all of the areas is where I start digging through and saying, “I can see why you feel like that’s a leads problem.” That’s not a leads problem.

Pillar 1: Priorities And The Alignment Of The “5-3-1” Framework

Now I want to go where the readers want us to go at this point. They’re like, “That’s not funny, but what do I do about it?” The reader is me, let’s be real here. Also, where you were taking us a moment ago, that’s all fine and good. What do I do about it? What do I evaluate first if I, as a CEO, intuitively go to the wrong place? If I’m always looking at symptoms and I’m not digging far enough for the root cause. I’m too close to the problem. What should I do next?

I’m going to be the one here, Gwen. You don’t have to be the balloon popper. I will be the balloon popper. I will be the one to tell the reader that there is almost never a one-size-fits-all order of evaluation. We wish there was because we would make millions if there was a one-size-fits-all, because we would sell that.

Gwen would sleep until noon every day and I would be up at 4:00 AM in my garden instead of at my desk and our lives would be great because the money would just come rolling in. There is no one-size-fits-all order of evaluation. However, the first place to look or where it begins is usually in one of the following places.

It’s either with the people and your people, too. It’s with your processes, your priorities or your performance indicators. The numbers are tracking to tell you whether you’re doing well. Gwen, I’m going to turn this over to you step by step. I’m going to have you tell me under what circumstances do you know you start with people?

I always look at people early because of the people who I work with, who my clients are. I work with women entrepreneurs, but they also tend to be strong feeler type entrepreneurs. They’re very empathetic. They really care about their people which usually means they’re making bad choices about their people.

Did you just say it’s bad to care about people, Gwen?

I did, but it is what I said.

I’m just going to go cry in the corner now.

Pillar 2: People And The Trap Of Misplaced Loyalty

It’s one of the phrases that I coined a couple years ago, which I call misplaced loyalty. We care about our people and we want to make sure that we take care of them. We forget that our number one priority is the health of the business. Which means, sometimes we have to let good people for however you want to find good. We have to still let them go. Sometimes, they’re no longer able to do the job that we need. Maybe the job that they were doing when they hired them doesn’t exist anymore.

If we’re keeping them on because they’re good. They help them get through a rough spot and all of these things. What’s happening is your wasting money because you’re paying salaries and whatever benefits, taxes and whatever happens to go with that. If you have other staff, they’re getting frustrated because they’re working at this level but this person’s working at this lower level. Somehow, that’s okay.

Usually, what that means is your higher-level people are starting to do less valuable work. There’s a whole thing if there is staff. Whether it’s part-time/contracted staff or actual employees. Any of those things. The people part is hard, and it’s particularly hard for the people that want to hire me. I can have a real hard nose. Sometimes, that’s what needs to happen.

People is a place that I look at first because it’s often a place where there are our challenges. As I said, it’s one of those that most of the people I work with are making lots of assumptions, back to the first issue about the people, therefore, are blind to what’s going on now. The second place that I always like to go is the prioritization piece. We always address that.

Technically, we address that first. The first thing we do in our process when we bring in a new client is what we call our 5, 3 and 1. We did one live. I did one. Someone said, “I listened to the one that you and Tonya did.” That is the process to help get clear on, are we building the business? Are we doing the thing that we want to do?

Technically, we always do that first but it’s not entirely what the problem is. Sometimes, in that process, it just confirms everything is right on track. Sometimes, it’s like, “I was going this way and I need to make this tiny bit of a shift to the left. That little tiny bit of shift to the left will make a big impact later on.” That’s what I mean with prioritization. We call it alignment, what we’re doing. What’s important to us is where we’re focusing time and energy. Now, going on going, that’s still something that we check from time to time. You’re headed down this path. This is still the path you want to be on.

What we focus our time and energy on reflects what truly matters to us. Share on X

Pillar 3: Processes And The “Susie” Flag For Outdated Workflows

That’s just what I was thinking about. Now that you say that out loud, what I see is start to the priorities conversation because you got to start somewhere. You’ve got to start in their head because you don’t know their business. From there, you’ll go to people. Once that gets sorted out or before you move on to the next, you bounce back to priorities. Do other priorities check because when the people shift or if there is a people problem, that gets solved. Sometimes it does shift the priority, then you bounce back to the next one. I’m going to assume the next would be, processes. What has to be going on for you to know that processes are where the root cause?

It’s interesting because the performance indicators are sometimes our next and sometimes it’s processes. The performance indicator indicates that it’s a process problem. Sometimes the processes indicate that we’re not using good performance. Those in the end get quite a bit more entangled over time, depending on. A lot of times it is about what’s come before. I use the phrase context matters all the time, but this is an example of that. As we’re starting to go through that, this is where the flag starts coming up.

Where I usually see it for processes often will be driven by that people piece when we realize, “We’re still doing it this way because Susie has been with the organization since the beginning. The organization has transformed greatly. We’ve made sure that Susie still felt comfortable in her role.” To me, that’s an immediate process flag. There’s probably a whole lot of stuff that we’re doing to accommodate Susie and what Susie’s used to and/or the way that business used to work. I’m going to look at processes.

I’m also just going to use my experience and say, this feels more cumbersome than it needs to be. Part of this whole conversation is understanding what is the founder-led business required of the founder. Are those things that feel founder appropriate? Years and years ago, when I went out, I found out about the way that one of my clients was taking inventory. All the inventory was in one room and they were looking at it to know what needed to be created next.

Which was fine at a certain level, but they were wanting to grow. You need to not be here for a month and everyone needs to still know what the next thing is that needs to be created. We have to take this out of you. Functionally, it’s a people thing, but it’s also a process thing. We’ve got to develop a process so that others can be looking at these numbers. Not just saying, “Instinctually, I know that widget A sells a lot, so we have to keep a lot on the shelf. With widget B, we don’t need nearly as much even though technically, they’re both the widget.”

We need systems so others can see and interpret the numbers, not just rely on instinct. Share on X

Most people will be like, “If we need ten of widget A, we must need ten of widget B.” You need two of widget B, but we always need to keep at least ten of widget A. That was all in someone’s head, the process issue. Sometimes, you can see that it’s like that’s in a single person’s head. That is not being processed well. Other times in the conversation, it’s very much about the performance indicators.

I’ll ask questions and there’s certain questions I expect every owner to know when I ask them without having to look them up. If they are looking up, they can look it up fast and tell, “It’s here. It should be here.” It’s one of those things. That’s data everybody needs or you need as a CEO. The fact that you don’t know that is a performance indicator problem. We’re not paying enough attention to this number. We talked about how we are managing that. Sometimes, it’s because they don’t know that they need that number. We can help with that. Other times, I don’t like what that number tells me, so I don’t look at it.

It sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I don’t like the number. Therefore, I will not look.

We all have that number. Whatever that number is. If we don’t get on the scale, we don’t know how much we weigh. It doesn’t change the fact that we weigh what we weigh. Whether we weigh 100 pounds or 400 pounds. Being on the scale doesn’t change that. We still are what we are. If we’ve got some health concerns, knowing that we weigh 400 pounds is probably important.

A few years ago, we only weighed 350. That’s an important number at that point. It’s one of those things like, does this number matter and what’s going on in your business? Back to the previous example of, I’ve got a lead problem. It’s like, “This doesn’t feel like a leads problem.” It’s also like, “I don’t know what’s happening in my bookkeeping accounting on any regular basis. I can’t tell you how much we sold in the previous month.” You don’t know if you have a leads problem. You think you have a lead problem, or I know I don’t have enough to pay the bills. That’s not necessarily leads problem. That may be just that you’re spending too much money.

That may be that your bills are too high.

Whether we weigh 100 pounds or 400 pounds, being on the scale doesn't change that. We still are what we are. Share on X

That may be an expense problem. That’s not necessarily leads problem. That would be like a performance indicator piece that we’re not looking at the pieces that we need to.

Pillar 4: Performance Indicators And The Relationship Between Numbers

Generally speaking, the first step oftentimes is priorities because you need a starting point. Figuring out the priorities, going to the people and seeing how the people stack up to the priorities. Whether the people’s situation needs to be sorted or not, bouncing back to priorities.

We’re always balancing back to priorities.

Always bouncing back every time you’re looking because you need a reference point. You’re then looking at processes or performance indicators. Can you give an example of the performance indicators being wrong? When I think of performance indicators, I’m thinking of my measurements of success. These are the numbers that tell me whether I’m winning or losing. Is there a situation where what I think are the performance indicators to be tracking are not the right ones? Given my scenario or my circumstances.

All the time, there are. I’m going to use the classic one because it’s the easiest one and almost everybody deals with it. We look at top-line sales as a key performance indicator. Not that it’s not one that we should track because we should. We use that as an end-all performance indicator often. For the real performance indicator, it’s the prophet number. I know of several folks who had a nice $300,000 or $400,000 a year business who got very excited about building a million-dollar business. The thing was, when they were at $300,000, they were profiting $100,000 a year.

They built it to a million dollars, and they were losing $100,000 a year. When we talk about it, which sounds better, a million-dollar business or a $300,000 business? A million-dollar business sounds like a way better business when in fact that’s a real big lie. It could be. I’m not saying that it has to be that way, but it can be. That’s one of those indicators that we need to know. We need to know what in relation to other numbers. It’s not a good enough number by itself.

A million-dollar business sounds like a way better business when in fact that's a real big lie. Share on X

We need to know what else it’s being related to. Profit by itself often is a reasonable indicator. I also like to know what that number is as a percentage of the sales number. That also tells us other things. In some industries, that should be a fairly high percentage. For others, a profit of just a few percentage points is considered healthy. It’s looking at the numbers and saying, “How do they all relate to one another?”

That’s the biggest issue with almost all indicators. We often look at them in isolation. Not in relation to the other numbers, that it makes sense. Taking a marketing example. People will look at OpenRate and say, “My OpenRate is X.” There’s lots of discussion about OpenRate that isn’t very accurate in the first place. Let’s just pretend like they were spot on. OpenRate doesn’t mean they read it or that they understood it.

Maybe that didn’t apply to them.

There’s a whole lot of things there. If we say, “I’ve got a 40% OpenRate.” Everyone was like, “You must have a great system.” If they’re all going to people who are below poverty level and you have a $10,000 a month offer. They may still open it because they may find what you’re saying interesting, but they’re not ever going to buy. Your 40% OpenRate is useless. It needs to be in context with other numbers. That’s the piece of understanding what numbers make sense and how they relate to other numbers. That’s where most people lose it. They look at a number here, a number there, and a number in this other place and don’t look at them in context.

The Uncomfortable Truth: Looking Where You Don’t Want To Look

As our time comes to a close, if somebody at a networking event were to come up to you and they say, “Gwen Bortner, how can I tell what my business needs next?” What would be your one-sentence answer for them?

This is going to sound snotty but I would say, where is the place that you don’t want to look?

The real question is: where are you avoiding looking? Share on X

They would answer probably or they probably walk away because that sounds mean when you’ve just met them.

That’s how it sounds snotty but I know what you’re trying to get to.

Somebody reading could say, they’ll probably run that through their head. This is a good finishing point for the episode. Now that you’ve read, you know whether it is your priorities, your processes, your people, or your performance indicators. At the very least, check your priorities, then ask yourself, “Where do I not want to look next?”

That is probably your starting point in terms of figuring out what your business needs next. I would say, if you want to sharpen your ability to quickly diagnose what your business needs from you and to lead with wisdom. The best next step for you is Gwen’s weekly question. Go to www.tonyakubo.com/Question and sign up there.

Every Friday, a question from Gwen magically, through the power of automation, lands in your inbox. You can answer it internally. You can journal your answer or you reply to Gwen with your answer. if you reply to Gwen, she'll answer back. If you write it in your journal, we don't know what you wrote so we don't say anything to you after that. Guess what? Next Friday, another question lands in your inbox. It's another micro step toward figuring out what your business needs from you. Go to every day www.tonyakubo.com/Question. Sign up there. We will see you in the next episode.

 

Mentioned in This Episode

• Gwen Bortner on LinkedIn
• Tonya Kubo’s Website
• Gwen’s Really One Good Question

 

About Your Hosts

Gwen Bortner has spent four decades advising executives and entrepreneurs in 45+ industries. She helps women succeed in business without sacrificing happiness by identifying their true desires and aligning their business functions. She spots overlooked bottlenecks and crafts efficient plans toward sustainable success that center your values and priorities. Known for her unique approach to problem-solving and accountability through the G.E.A.R.S. framework, Gwen empowers clients to achieve their definition of success without sacrificing what matters most.

Tonya Kubo is a marketing strategist and community builder who helps entrepreneurs build thriving online communities. As co-host of The Business You Really Want and Chief Marketing and Operations Officer (CMOO) at Everyday Effectiveness, she keeps conversations on track and ensures complex business concepts are accessible to everyone. A master facilitator with 18+ years of experience in online community building, Tonya takes a people-first approach to marketing and centers the human experience in all she does.