Is That Really the Problem?

Navicet
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  • Management

Why do smart teams get stuck? Why do the same problems keep coming back? And why do so many solutions fail to create lasting change? If you've ever looked at a workplace challenge and wondered, "Is that really the problem?" this podcast is for you. We're Lauren Broomall and Peter Moon. In 2014, we started Navicet, a human-centered management consultancy, where we've spent years helping organizations untangle complex challenges and improve how work gets done. Each episode, we explore what sits beneath the symptoms, unpacking the hidden dynamics that shape how work gets done in complex organizations. Through thoughtful conversations, we examine decision-making, priorities, organizational design, leadership, collaboration, and the ways of working that either create friction or unlock impact. If you're a leader, practitioner, or catalyst working to improve how teams operate in complex organizations, you'll leave with practical ideas, fresh perspectives, and better questions to help you solve the right problems.

  1. 5d ago

    Our Processes Slow Us Down

    Our processes slow us down. Sometimes that’s exactly what they’re supposed to do. A little friction can prevent mistakes, manage risk, and make sure the right things happen before work moves forward. But processes also accumulate. One team adds a review, another adds a form, someone adds a step because something went wrong once—and eventually nobody is looking at the experience end to end. Peter Moon and Lauren Broomall explore how reasonable decisions can add up to processes that are both inefficient and ineffective, especially when different teams are optimizing for different outcomes. They talk about bureaucracy, handoffs, conflicting incentives, process ownership, and why starting with the human experience can expose tradeoffs that otherwise remain invisible. If a process feels painfully slow, the first step may be surprisingly simple: trace one piece of work through the system, look closely at the handoffs, and ask what each step is actually accomplishing.

  2. Oct 21

    We Need Some Best Practices

    We need some best practices. It sounds reasonable. Why reinvent the wheel when someone else has already figured out what works? But “best practice” carries an assumption: that what worked somewhere else will work here, too. Peter Moon and Lauren Broomall unpack their complicated relationship with best practices—and why, after years of resisting the phrase, they’re now writing a book about practices that seem to hold up across very different organizations and conditions. They use one example, sharing unfinished work, to explore what makes a practice genuinely useful: it should be actionable, improve the work in observable ways, and come with an understanding of where it can go wrong. Along the way, they talk about collaboration, prototyping, writing, AI, and what twelve years of consulting has taught them about the difference between copying someone else’s answer and learning from experience.

  3. Oct 14

    Requirements Keep Changing

    The requirements keep changing. That’s a familiar complaint on technology teams. The business asks for something, the team builds exactly what was requested, and somehow the result still isn’t right. Peter and Lauren unpack what’s often hiding underneath the problem: vague needs, overly detailed specifications, missing context, enormous requirements documents, performative user acceptance testing, and a relationship between business and technology that can start to look more contractual than collaborative. They make the case for a simpler distinction: requirements should describe what someone needs to accomplish and why. Specifications describe how a particular solution will meet that need. Keeping those two things separate creates room for discovery, prototyping, technical expertise, and shared accountability—and makes it much easier to find out whether you’re building the right thing before it’s too late.

  4. Oct 6

    Decisions Take Too Long

    Decisions take too long. It’s one of the most common complaints in large organizations. But how long should a decision take — and what exactly is making it slow? Peter Moon and Lauren Broomall unpack the different problems hiding underneath slow decisions: unclear decision rights, high stakes, consensus and alignment, dependencies, governance, organizational growth, and the risk of making a call that someone else later overturns. They also explore a less obvious possibility: sometimes the thing taking too long isn’t really a decision at all. It’s design — figuring out what the answer should be in the first place. So what can you do? Make the decision process visible, clarify who gets to decide, and when the answer itself is still unclear, make a proposal people can react to.

  5. Oct 1

    People Don't Like Change

    When a transformation runs into resistance, one explanation comes up again and again: people don’t like change. But people make substantial changes in their lives all the time. The more useful question may be why they don’t like this change. In this episode of Is That Really the Problem?, Navicet's Peter Moon and Lauren Broomall unpack what can sit underneath resistance to organizational change: disruption without a clear benefit, accumulated disappointment from earlier transformations, changes designed too far from the work, shifting processes that never have time to take hold, and reasonable doubt about whether the latest initiative will actually make anything better. They explore the difference between imposing a new way of working and creating the conditions for people to discover its value. That includes starting with teams that are already making progress, learning from what works, making change smaller and more tangible, sharing unfinished work, shortening feedback cycles, and using everyday questions and behaviors to reinforce a new way of working. The conversation also looks at change fatigue, formal change-management methods, and the role leaders and other people with influence play in shaping whether change feels like another requirement to comply with or something worth participating in. People may resist change. But before treating that resistance as the problem, it is worth asking what the resistance is telling you about the change itself.

  6. Sep 22

    Our Stakeholders Complain

    When stakeholders complain that they are not getting what they need, the obvious diagnosis is often a difficult stakeholder, poor communication, or unrealistic expectations. But repeated frustration usually has more behind it. In this episode of Is That Really the Problem?, Navicet's Peter Moon and Lauren Broomall unpack what sits underneath stakeholder dissatisfaction: limited visibility into work and priorities, unclear service models, mismatched expectations, capacity constraints, defensive commitments, and the difference between delivering what someone asked for and solving the problem they actually have. They explore how shared-services teams can get caught in a reinforcing cycle of frustration. Stakeholders become accustomed to disappointment. Delivery teams become cautious about overcommitting. Estimates get padded, processes become more rigid, and both sides develop ways of protecting themselves from the other. The conversation also looks at what changes when teams move beyond order taking and begin working as strategic collaborators: making work visible, sharing unfinished thinking, testing assumptions early, understanding the underlying need, and designing services around both organizational constraints and the people who depend on them. The problem may not be that stakeholders complain. The complaint may be evidence that the relationship, process, or service model is making effective collaboration harder than it needs to be.

  7. Sep 15

    Dependencies are Late

    When dependencies show up late, the obvious diagnosis is often poor planning. Someone should have identified the need earlier, communicated it sooner, or put it on the roadmap. But in complex organizations, some dependencies only become visible as the work itself becomes clearer. In this episode of Is That Really the Problem?, Peter Moon and Lauren Broomall from Navicet unpack why dependencies surface late, including changing priorities, evolving requirements, shifting organizational structures, incomplete information, and the simple fact that teams often depend on expertise they do not themselves possess. They explore the role of dependency workshops, roadmaps, planning tools, assumptions, and progressive levels of detail in making those dependencies easier to anticipate and manage. They also look at the limits of trying to map everything in advance, especially when plans are still changing and the organization around them is changing too. The conversation offers a more practical way to think about dependency management: not as an attempt to eliminate surprises, but as a way to surface the important ones early enough, create useful placeholders for what is not yet known, and make the collaboration between teams much less disruptive when the details finally emerge.

  8. Sep 8

    Roles and Responsibilities are Unclear

    When people say “roles and responsibilities are unclear,” the obvious response is usually to create more clarity: better role definitions, a RACI, a team charter, or more detailed documentation. But what if the roles are already clearly defined? In this episode of Is That Really the Problem?, we unpack the different problems that can hide underneath role confusion, including unclear decision rights, overlapping team boundaries, shared-service models, differences in team composition, and the limits of trying to define ambiguity away. They also explore when RACIs are useful, why process maps can sometimes reveal more than role descriptions, and why teams may need stronger ways of working through ambiguity rather than simply adding another layer of documentation. The conversation offers a practical way to think beyond the role description itself and focus on the specific points of friction that may be making collaboration harder than it needs to be.

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Why do smart teams get stuck? Why do the same problems keep coming back? And why do so many solutions fail to create lasting change? If you've ever looked at a workplace challenge and wondered, "Is that really the problem?" this podcast is for you. We're Lauren Broomall and Peter Moon. In 2014, we started Navicet, a human-centered management consultancy, where we've spent years helping organizations untangle complex challenges and improve how work gets done. Each episode, we explore what sits beneath the symptoms, unpacking the hidden dynamics that shape how work gets done in complex organizations. Through thoughtful conversations, we examine decision-making, priorities, organizational design, leadership, collaboration, and the ways of working that either create friction or unlock impact. If you're a leader, practitioner, or catalyst working to improve how teams operate in complex organizations, you'll leave with practical ideas, fresh perspectives, and better questions to help you solve the right problems.

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