Your best employees may be hiding your worst problems

One of the best employees I ever worked with helped hide one of the biggest problems in the branch.

When I took over my first branch, I inherited a counter supervisor our customers absolutely loved. If something went wrong, he found a way to make it right. If a customer needed material, he found a way to get it. If an order became complicated, he stayed with it until it was resolved.

Customers trusted him because he cared.

The problem was that our inventory was often wrong.

A customer would call looking for material. The system would show we had it. The customer would drive to the branch expecting to pick it up, and then we could not find it.

My supervisor had become very good at handling those moments. He apologized, found a substitute product, absorbed the margin hit when necessary, took care of the customer, and moved on to the next order.

But we were spending far more time recovering from the inventory problem than understanding why it kept happening. What started as an occasional workaround had become part of the routine.

Looking back, that is what bothers me most. One of the employees most committed to protecting the customer had unintentionally helped keep the larger issue hidden. He cared so much that he kept solving the immediate problem instead of forcing the larger one into the open.

Committed employees are often the most willing to compensate for an organization’s weaknesses. They create workarounds, absorb extra work, and protect customers from internal breakdowns. As a result, the operation can look healthier than it is.

Customer issues get resolved. Safety numbers look clean. Turnover has not happened yet. The branch still hits the number. From a distance, the organization........

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