Molly Graham's 'snorkel before you scuba' rule urges leaders to diagnose systemic issues (structure, dynamics) before blaming individuals. It's often cheaper and more effective to fix the system than to cycle through personnel, a modern take on W. Edwards Deming’s philosophy.
Many team failures attributed to individuals are actually symptoms of flawed organizational structure, such as unclear roles, conflicting goals, or messy design. Firing an employee in this context fails to solve the root problem, leading to a costly cycle of rehiring into the same broken system.
When leaders complain an employee isn't a 'strong enough performer,' it often reveals their own failure to provide clear goals and role definitions. This common phrase deflects accountability from a fixable structural problem (an undefined job) to an individual, trapping the organization in a cycle of blame.
Dysfunctional team dynamics, such as slowness or risk aversion, are rational responses to the environment leaders create. Instead of adding new processes, leaders should examine their own behavior. The team's actions mirror what is truly incentivized, regardless of what leaders claim to want.
Leaders often default to blaming interpersonal issues when conflict arises. The root cause is frequently structural: two people given overlapping ownership and contradictory goals. The organization effectively puts them in a 'steel cage match' and then blames them for fighting, ignoring its own design flaw.
Solving deep-seated structural and dynamic issues isn't about creating more documentation. The solution requires leaders to look in the mirror and confront how their own behaviors and decisions created a system that produces undesirable outcomes. The problem is a lack of introspection, not a lack of process.
Most organizations already know their systems are broken. The failure isn't in diagnosis but in the courage to act on that knowledge. The real barrier to change is the leadership's nerve to confront entrenched interests, admit past failures, and fundamentally alter the system.
Before firing someone, leaders should be forced to answer: 'What known structural problem are we choosing not to fix?' This question reframes termination not as a performance issue, but as a conscious leadership decision to accept the cost of turnover over the difficulty of fixing the underlying system.
A simple, memorable metaphor that people can easily relate to and use is more valuable than a complex, academically 'correct' framework that no one adopts. The success of Molly Graham's model is its simplicity, proving that adoption beats theoretical perfection.