Imagine you’ve got two piles of LEGO bricks scattered across the floor. One pile contains the large bricks designed for toddlers, and the other contains the smaller, traditional LEGO bricks. Both collections are colorful, versatile, and capable of being used to build all sorts of interesting things.
Now imagine you’re trying to build a tower using pieces from both piles. You pick up a large red brick and try to attach a smaller blue brick to it. It doesn’t connect. You try another piece, turn it around, press a little harder, and discover that it still doesn’t work.
There’s nothing wrong with either brick. Both are perfectly good building materials. But they weren’t designed to connect in the way you’re trying to use them. And no matter how much you want that tower to work, wanting it isn’t going to make the pieces fit.
We encounter similar situations in our businesses more often than we’d like to acknowledge. We hire employees, develop products, establish relationships with suppliers, and attract customers. Each becomes part of the business we’re building, and we expect those pieces to work together.
But sometimes they don’t. And instead of recognizing the incompatibility, we keep trying to force the pieces together.
A Great Employee in the Wrong Environment
Imagine someone who’s naturally bubbly, outgoing, and talkative. She loves being around people, enjoys conversation, and brings energy and enthusiasm into almost every situation. She’s intelligent, hardworking, and capable of doing detailed work.
Now put her in an office where people spend most of their day conducting research, analyzing statistics, and concentrating on complicated information. The environment is quiet, conversations are infrequent, and employees generally work independently for long stretches of time.
Our outgoing employee is miserable. She wants to talk to people, bounce ideas around, and interact throughout the day. Meanwhile, her coworkers are becoming increasingly frustrated because her attempts at conversation interrupt the concentration their work requires.
She’s not a bad employee, and neither are they. She may be perfectly capable of doing the work, but the environment doesn’t suit her natural preferences. The things that make her enjoyable to work with in one setting become disruptive in another.
Now imagine taking one of those quiet, analytical employees and putting them in a busy customer service environment where they’re expected to engage with people continuously. They may be able to do the job, but spending eight hours a day interacting with customers could leave them completely exhausted.
Neither person is necessarily better than the other. They’re simply different, and those differences matter when we’re deciding where people fit within our organizations.
Of course, differences aren’t automatically incompatibilities. An outgoing salesperson and a reserved accountant may work together beautifully because their different strengths complement one another. We don’t need everyone to have the same personality. We need people whose capabilities, values, and ways of working can function effectively together.
And sometimes a mismatch isn’t about personality at all. An employee may have the technical skills to perform a job but fundamentally disagree with the values that guide how your business operates. If your organization places a high priority on taking care of customers, an employee who consistently views customers as an inconvenience creates a conflict that additional technical training may never resolve.
We can teach people new skills, help them develop better habits, and sometimes adjust responsibilities to take advantage of their strengths. But we also have to recognize when the demands of a position or the expectations of an organization are fundamentally incompatible with the person we’re asking to fulfill them.
Not Every Customer Is Your Customer
Most businesses spend a great deal of time thinking about how to attract more customers. We invest in marketing, work to generate referrals, and celebrate when someone new decides to do business with us.
But not every customer is a good fit.
Imagine a company that has built its reputation around providing a consistent, efficient service at a reasonable price. Its systems are designed to deliver reliable results without extensive customization.
Now imagine a customer who wants every aspect of that service tailored to their individual preferences. They expect frequent meetings, unusual accommodations, and immediate responses to requests that fall outside the company’s normal processes.
The customer may be perfectly reasonable in wanting those things. There are businesses designed to provide that level of customization. But this particular company isn’t one of them.
So the business begins making exceptions. Employees spend additional time accommodating special requests, normal processes get interrupted, and the customer continues to be disappointed because the experience never quite meets their expectations.
The business may even discover that the customer who generates substantial revenue produces very little profit once all the additional time and resources are considered.
Neither party is necessarily wrong. They simply want different kinds of business relationships.
Sometimes we can adjust our offerings or establish clearer expectations and make the relationship work. But sometimes the best outcome is recognizing that another business would be better equipped to serve that customer.
Having a customer who wants to buy from you doesn’t automatically mean you’re the right business to serve them.
A Good Supplier Can Still Be the Wrong Supplier
The same principle applies to the businesses we depend on to deliver our own products and services.
Suppose your company has made reliable delivery one of its most important commitments to customers. You know that when you promise something will arrive on Thursday, your customers are counting on it.
Now imagine working with a supplier who provides excellent products at competitive prices but treats delivery schedules as approximate. Sometimes orders arrive on time, and sometimes they’re several days late.
From the supplier’s perspective, a little flexibility may be perfectly acceptable. Their other customers may not care whether an order arrives on Thursday or Monday.
But your business does care, because your reputation depends on meeting the commitments you’ve made.
You can call, send reminders, negotiate, and repeatedly explain why those deadlines matter. The supplier may genuinely want to keep your business. But if their operating practices don’t support the reliability you need, you’re going to experience the same frustrations over and over again.
The supplier isn’t necessarily a bad company. It may be an excellent partner for a business with different requirements.
It simply isn’t the right fit for yours.
And the cost of that mismatch extends beyond the purchase price. It includes the time employees spend following up on orders, the disruptions created by delays, and the damage that can occur when your customers lose confidence in your promises.
Sometimes the cheapest supplier becomes the most expensive relationship.
When a Product or Service No Longer Fits
Not every incompatibility involves people or relationships. Sometimes the things that no longer fit are products or services we’ve been offering for years.
Imagine a business that introduced a particular service ten years ago. At the time, customers wanted it, the company had the resources to deliver it efficiently, and the profit margins made it an excellent addition to the business.
Over time, however, things changed. Labor costs increased, technology created alternative solutions, and customer demand began to decline. The service now requires more effort to deliver and generates less profit than it once did.
But the company keeps offering it.
Perhaps it’s something the owner personally developed and takes pride in. Perhaps a few longtime customers still request it. Or perhaps nobody has stopped to examine whether the service makes financial sense anymore.
The business continues dedicating employees, equipment, and management attention to an offering that no longer contributes enough to justify the resources it consumes.
Meanwhile, other opportunities may be going unexplored because those resources are tied up supporting something that used to work.
Of course, a product or service doesn’t have to be the most profitable thing a company offers to deserve a place in its lineup. Some offerings help attract customers who purchase other services, strengthen important relationships, or provide capabilities that make the overall business more valuable.
But those benefits need to be understood and evaluated rather than simply assumed.
If an offering no longer makes sense, we have choices. We may be able to increase prices, change how it’s delivered, reduce costs, or reposition it for a different market.
Sometimes, though, the right decision is to stop offering it.
Something can have been a wonderful fit for your business for years and still no longer belong in the business you’re building today.
Why Do We Keep Trying to Make It Work?
One of the most interesting things about these situations is how often we recognize the problem long before we’re willing to do anything about it. We know an employee is struggling in a role that doesn’t suit them, a customer consumes far more resources than the relationship justifies, a supplier repeatedly creates problems, or a product or service isn’t producing the results it once did. And yet we continue.
Sometimes it’s loyalty. We appreciate the employee who’s been with us for years, the customer who supported us when we were getting started, or the supplier who’s helped us through difficult situations. Sometimes it’s habit. We’ve always done business this way, and changing it feels uncomfortable.
Sometimes it’s the investment we’ve already made. We’ve spent money developing the product, time training the employee, or years building the relationship. Walking away can feel like admitting that investment was wasted.
And sometimes we simply believe that if we work a little harder, provide a little more training, make another exception, or give the situation more time, everything will eventually come together.
Occasionally, we’re right. The employee may thrive in a different position, the customer may be a good fit for a different service, or a change in how we deliver a product may make it profitable again. That’s one of the advantages of thinking about our businesses as LEGOs rather than jigsaw puzzles. We can rearrange the pieces and discover combinations we hadn’t previously considered.
But flexibility has limits. At some point, we need to stop asking “How can we make this work?” and start asking “Does this still make sense for the business we’re trying to build?”
The goal isn’t to keep every LEGO we’ve ever collected in the structure we’re building. It’s to recognize which pieces belong together, which can be used differently, and which no longer fit.
