A Leadership Lesson from a Stove Knob

I genuinely thought this would be a five-minute fix.

One of the knobs on our gas stove broke, so I did what any reasonable person would do—I looked for and ordered a replacement. When it arrived, it wouldn’t fit. I checked the model number, confirmed it was correct, and assumed the problem was a manufacturing issue. So, I ordered another knob and returned the first one I ordered.

Same result.

At that point, the story I was telling myself was clear: something out there was wrong—the part, the supplier, the design. It couldn’t possibly be something simple on my end. I knew it wasn’t me! I even started looking for a repairman to fix the stove. When I realized it wouldn’t be cheap, I decided to take another look.

Over the next couple of weeks, I kept returning to the problem in short bursts—trying again, getting frustrated, setting it aside. I told myself I shouldn’t force it because I would break the stem and would definitely need a repairman. Each time, I focused on finding a better way to make it fit rather than questioning the situation itself. I was convinced the solution was a new part.

Eventually, I slowed down enough to really look at the stem the knob attaches to. That’s when I noticed it—a thin ring of color from the old knob still clinging to the stem. It was subtle, easy to miss, and just thick enough to keep the new knob from sliding on properly. Once I removed it, everything changed. The new knob slipped on effortlessly. The burner worked perfectly. Problem solved—not by adding something new, but by removing what didn’t belong anymore.

That moment stuck with me because leadership challenges often work the same way.

When something isn’t working, our instinct is to add: a new process, a new strategy, a new tool, a new initiative. And when that doesn’t fit, we try again—slightly different, slightly improved—but fundamentally the same approach. What we don’t always do is stop long enough to ask the harder, quieter questions.

Here are three questions to ponder.

• What’s still here that no longer serves us—not because it’s broken, but because it’s outdated?

• What habits, assumptions, or decisions made in a different time are we still operating under simply because they’ve been there for a long time?

• What small, almost invisible residue from the past is quietly interfering with progress today—just enough to make the right solutions feel wrong?

Sometimes these are uncomfortable questions because they don’t point directly to the answer. They ask us to examine what we’ve carried forward without revisiting, what we’ve normalized, and what we’ve stopped seeing altogether.

The lesson for me was this: before replacing something again, take the time to clear what’s there and or left behind. Leadership isn’t always about installing the next solution—it’s often about removing the small, overlooked obstacles that make progress harder than it needs to be.