Most workarounds begin with good intentions. Something isn’t working the way it should, but the business still needs to move forward. A leader steps in. An extra approval gets added. A team creates a temporary process. Someone takes ownership of a problem that was never supposed to belong to them. In the moment, those decisions are…
Most organizations don’t struggle because they lack talented people. More often, they’re struggling because the flow of work has silently become constrained over time. It rarely happens because of one big decision. Instead, constraints accumulate one reasonable decision at a time. A decision begins waiting for another approval. A process becomes dependent on one person. A…
Several years ago, I was on a sailing trip in the Bahamas with my family. One afternoon, while windsurfing through a shallow bay, I came across something I had never seen before. Five or six live queen conchs had been wired together and left on the ocean floor. At first, I couldn’t make sense of it. They…
If I had to summarize how most organizations become harder to lead, it would be in five words: It made sense at the time. Almost nothing that creates unnecessary drag inside an organization starts out as a bad idea. A customer needs an exception, so the team creates one. A leader steps in because it’s…
As organizations grow, there comes a point where progress starts requiring noticeably more effort than it used to. Revenue may still be increasing, customers are still being served, and the business continues moving forward, but something feels different. Growth has become heavier. It rarely happens because of one major problem. Often it’s the result of small…
When something inside an organization isn’t working, the first instinct is usually to look at the process. A workflow gets redesigned. Another approval is added. Someone documents a new procedure or introduces new software. The assumption is that if the process improves, the results will improve with it. Sometimes that’s true. However, the process isn’t always…