One of the most expensive habits in business is creating a new problem so you don’t have to face the current one.

It happens every day.

A team misses the numbers, and instead of asking why they're failing to convert the opportunities already in front of them, they start brainstorming offers, markets, pricing models, and strategies that didn't exist yesterday.

We watched a version of this play out a few weeks ago. 

We were sitting with a client going through their numbers — sales metrics, KPIs, every component that drives revenue. The business was growing up and to the right and from the outside, things looked great.

However, when we looked at the data as a whole, not just the topline but every piece that actually drives revenue-generating activity, one department had fumbled hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single quarter. Conservatively. The real number was almost certainly higher.

And for a small business owner, that’s not a rounding error.

So we did what we always do. We pulled the leads, the call data, and the conversion numbers. And what we found wasn’t surprising… the business should have been converting significantly more than they were. 

Yet every time the issue was brought up to the sales team, the explanation pointed to everybody except their own execution.

Instead of taking ownership, they proposed solutions that made no sense for a business whose core problem was much simpler.

They weren't converting the people already walking through the door.

And rather than get better at that, they were preparing to build an entirely new revenue stream around the customers they were already failing to close.

The worst part wasn't even about the money, it was how much effort went into avoiding the obvious conclusion. To them, creating another revenue stream felt like strategy, but it was just avoidance.

Which is basically the professional-sounding version of “it’s not my fault.”

Picture an NBA team in the Finals shooting 5 of 20 from three.

Sometimes the honest answer is that the offense isn't creating open shots. The system needs to change.

Most of the time though, the shots are already there.

Wide open shots.

Nobody missed because the play was broken.

They missed because they didn’t make the shots they were already getting.

That was this sales team.

And rather than improve the thing they were already being paid to do, the instinct was to build something new.

Because the honest version of that conversation is uncomfortable…

“We aren’t converting customers they should be converting, and we aren’t good enough yet at the thing we’re paid to do.” 

But the reason this behavior survives is because when a business is growing it acts as anesthetic. 

When everything is moving up and to the right, nobody wants to be the person who says:

“Great quarter. We also leaked hundreds of thousands of dollars that we had no business leaking.”

So the leak compounds quietly while everyone points to the growth as evidence that things are fine.

Until somebody does the math.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars every quarter turns into millions over a few years.

All because nobody prioritized fixing the thing that was already broken. 

We’ve had to train ourselves out of the same instinct.

Every month, whether the business is up or down, we do a game tape review. Not just the wins — the deals we should have closed, the customers we should have retained, and the places we fell short.

It's become a part of our culture for many reasons, but most importantly, because reviewing game tape after a loss doesn't make you special. Anyone can do that. Reviewing it after a win, when you have every excuse not to, is where improvement actually comes from.

A team that gets better doesn't immediately pivot away from a play that still works. It asks a harder question.

Did we execute it well enough? Did each person do their job at the level the outcome required?

The teams that lose always have a reason it wasn't them. The leads were bad. The market changed. The play was wrong.

Ownership is the opposite. It's each person looking at their own contribution first before searching for a new explanation.

The next time your numbers come up short, watch your first move.

Do you examine execution — or do you reach for a new offer, a new segment, a new strategy?

One of those is ownership. The other is deflection that happens to sound like strategy.

Stop drawing up a new play to avoid the truth that you're missing open shots.

Get in the gym and do the job.