Episode
You Don’t Have a People Problem — You Have a System Problem | Joel Schwan
- Podcast
- Business Roundtable
- Published
- Mar 5, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2606
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Summary
You spend months hiring someone great, then lose them in 90 days. It is tempting to blame the people. Workforce strategist Joel Schwan says the real problem lies in the system beneath them. Joel is the founder of Schwan Stratifyr and holds a master's degree in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, with over 25 years of experience in retail team leadership and enterprise workforce operations. After a layoff of his own, he started seeing the same pattern everywhere: companies do not need more people; they need clarity. In this conversation, he and David Carr unpack the five areas of workforce audit (role clarity, workflow mapping, capacity, governance, and metrics), when a contractor beats a permanent hire, how to avoid the burnout and layoff trap, and his Constellation Design idea of treating talent as an ecosystem instead of a pipeline. Running through all of it is the Steward Your Business theme: your business is a mirror of how you lead, and your people are the asset worth stewarding. You will walk away able to spot whether your own "people problem" is really a system problem, and what to fix first. Connect with Joel Schwan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelschwan/ Schwan Stratifyr: https://www.schwanstratifyr.com Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/business-roundtable--6049255/support . Connect with Steward Your Business: Book a Leadership Clarity Call: https://calendar.stewardyourbusiness.com/cc Call: +1 909.404.9865 Website: https://stewardyourbusiness.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidwcarr Watch more episodes and subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@steward_your_business