Finding a Goat to Scape…
Working with fast-growing businesses in constant flux, I often hear about so-called ‘problem’ individuals or teams. The usual story goes like this: the company is going through big changes, most people are on board, but a few difficult characters or specific group are holding back progress. If only they would stop resisting and just go along with it, things would be so much easier.
Obholzer and Roberts (2019) discuss this in their paper, “The Troublesome Individual”, pointing out that “institutional difficulties are often attributed to the personalities of particular individuals, identified as ‘troublesome’” (p. 144). The assumption is that these people or the group are getting in way and that getting rid of them will fix the issue. But this way of thinking often misses the bigger picture.
From what I’ve seen, these ‘troublesome’ people tend to appear when a company is going through major change. Rather than simply causing problems, they often give voice to concerns or uncertainties that others feel but don’t say out loud. This allows the wider group to ignore these uncomfortable feelings and instead pin the issue on one person — “it’s them, not us, who’s struggling with this”.
A better approach is to step back and look at what’s really going on. Instead of saying, “Why is X being so difficult?”, it might be more useful to ask what their behaviour tells us about the company as a whole. Often, the people who get labelled as troublemakers are actually reflecting deeper tensions that the organisation hasn’t properly addressed.
This matters because tackling the real underlying issues is far more effective than blaming individuals. Simply removing someone rarely solves the problem — before long, another person will take on the same role. Instead, recognising these patterns can help leaders make better decisions about how to support change.
For anyone leading a fast-growing business, it’s worth asking: who in your organisation is being cast as the ‘troublemaker’? What might their actions reveal about the wider company dynamics? The answers whilst on occasion inconvenient can be helpful in shaping the actions you might choose to take.
