There are three general types of problems.

Type A problems are where the state of the art isn’t good enough. Even if we executed to the fullest extent of possible we’d still fall short. Cancer is like this. Even if the state of the art was applied with full fidelity, tons of people would suffer and die early deaths.

Type B problems are where the state of the art solutions would be good enough, but something’s not going to plan. Many operational problems are like this. We have a process, but life is messy so things go wrong even though the issue was “never supposed to happen.” So we fix the problem, improve our ability to execute, or both.

Type C problems are the ones caused by bad actors with nefarious intent. It’s the problem that arises because someone tries to screw over someone else, on purpose, because they can get away with it. It could be someone taking credit for a colleagues work, or a person running a Ponzi scheme which defrauded investors of billions of dollars. In a Type C problem, the bad actor knows what they are doing is wrong, unfair, or sub-optimal, but they do it anyway.

A good way to judge a team or enterprise is by looking at the proportion of time spent on each type of problem. Organizations that are well led and well managed tend to spend a lot of their time on Type A problems. They create systems and coach people well to minimize Type B problems, and they simply don’t tolerate Type C problems and the people that cause them.

Well run organizations and their leaders know that Type C problems are trust-killers which make working the more important Type A and Type B problems infinitely harder.

Luckily, creating safeguards to prevent Type C problems is not complicated. All it takes is the team or its leader articulating a set of values, behavioral norms, and performance standards that that make it clear how we’ll act and how we won’t. Then, the leader has to coach people up to those standards and remove people who continually violate them.

This may take courage, but it’s not complicated.

To me, thinking through the “how” of work, might be the most underrated activity in all of management and leadership. And it can be so easy - even talking for literally an hour with a team about “how are we going to act and how are we not going to act” can make a huge difference.