Imagine a company where Sales and Operations have been at each other for years.
Sales says Operations is rigid, slow, and too far removed from what customers actually need. Operations says Sales overpromises, ignores process, and drops impossible commitments into their lap at the last minute.
Leadership has worked on it. They hired a new Head of Sales and, later, a new Operations leader. They brought in facilitators, clarified handoffs, held an off-site, and ran communication training.
Things improved for a while. And then…
Then a large customer request hit. Deadlines got tight and the old argument walked back into the room wearing a different shirt.
The “communication problem” started to sound less like an explanation and more like wallpaper that had been there for a while.
A coach or consultant working with a systemic lens came in and asked a different question:
What if the recurrence itself is telling us something?
When the Cast Changes and the Plot Doesn’t
One conflict can be an event. Two may still be coincidence, poor judgment, or a difficult pairing. But when a recognizable problem keeps returning across different people, leaders, and attempts to solve it, the repetition deserves attention.
Recurrence changes the question.
Instead of asking only, “Who is causing this?” or “How do we get these two groups to communicate better?” the SI coach asks, “What has remained the same even as the people and solutions have changed?”
Even if you find something, it does not prove the problem is systemic. A recurring problem can still stem from a flawed process, a skill gap, weak management, or a series of poor decisions.
But recurrence is information, and it tells us the current explanation may not be sufficient.
What Stayed the Same?
Back to Sales and Operations…
Suppose we look more closely and find that Sales is rewarded for revenue growth, speed, and saying yes to customers. Operations is rewarded for margin, predictability, quality, and controlling exceptions.
If you’ve worked with organizations, none of this will sound far-fetched.
Both groups are doing what the organization asked them to do.
Now, in this company, suppose there is no clear rule for who decides when a customer exception is worth the operational cost.
Senior leadership keeps repeating two equally sacred instructions: delight the customer and protect the margin.
Nobody resolves the trade-off, so Sales presses, Operations resists, and each side views the other as unreasonable.
Meanwhile, personalities may add heat, and the structure supplies more fuel.
The organization changes the VP of Sales, and the new person inherits the same incentives. They replace the Operations leader, and the same conflicting mandate remains. They work to improve meetings, and everyone behaves better… for a while.
But the conditions that generated the argument are still sitting at the table.
Sometimes the Conflict Is Doing a Job
There is another possibility worth investigating. Repeated conflict can sometimes carry a tension the larger organization has not resolved.
In this case, the Sales-Operations fight may be raising a strategic question that senior leadership has never fully answered: Are we a highly customized business that bends for important customers, or are we a disciplined operation that protects standardization and margin?
As long as Sales and Operations keep fighting about it, the organization can postpone making the harder choice.
This does not mean anyone designed the conflict or secretly wants it. It means the conflict may be useful to the system in ways no one intended.
Emotional Intelligence may help the two teams handle the conflict better.
It cannot make the strategic choice senior leadership has left unresolved.
Recurrence Is a Clue, Not a Verdict
Systemic work can become sloppy when we fall in love with our own pattern recognition.
The fact that something repeats does not prove a hidden dynamic. It earns investigation. That’s it.
We look for evidence such as: What conditions were present each time? What changed and what did not? What has already been tried? Did the intervention create lasting change, temporary relief, or no change at all?
Previous interventions and attempted solutions are data, too.
The discipline is to stay curious long enough to discover what the recurrence is telling you, rather than deciding in advance what it must mean.
Try This on a Problem That Keeps Returning
Choose one problem in your work that has occurred more than once.
Then make a quick recurrence map:
- What changed from one episode to the next? People, leaders, timing, structure, or process?
- What stayed the same? Roles, incentives, authority, expectations, history, handoffs, cultural rules?
- What has already been tried, and what happened afterward?
- What familiar explanation are you using, and what does it still fail to explain?
Do not use the exercise to prove that you have identified a systemic cause. Use it to identify what deserves a closer look.
Sometimes the answer will be wonderfully ordinary, such as a broken process, unclear ownership, or the wrong person in the job. Good. Fix it.
Sometimes you will discover that the people have been reenacting a contradiction, clinging to an old adaptation, or struggling within conditions that keep producing the same result.
Either way, recurrence has done its job. It has made you look again.
The cast may change. When the plot does not, the system has earned your curiosity.