Organisational inertia: why good teams stop moving

The organisation has thoughtful people.

They can see what needs to change. They have discussed it quite thoroughly. There is probably a document.

And yet a small improvement still needs approval from someone who needs approval from someone else.

Eventually the person with the idea gets back to the work they can actually do.

From a distance, it can look as though nobody wants to change. From inside, it may feel as though wanting has very little to do with it.

What is organisational inertia?

Organisational inertia is the tendency to keep working in familiar ways, even when people can see a reason to change.

I think it is worth looking at the arrangements around people before deciding that the people are the problem.

How does a decision get made? What happens to somebody who tries something different? Who is allowed to stop an activity? What is rewarded at the end of the year?

Those details help explain why an enthusiastic team can remain remarkably still.

The rule may have outlived its reason

A check is introduced after a mistake.

At the time, it is sensible. Everyone understands what it protects.

Later, the situation changes. The person who remembers the original problem leaves. The check remains, and another one is added somewhere nearby.

Nobody has to behave foolishly for this to become difficult.

One person completes the form because it is required. Another signs it because it has arrived. A third waits for both before doing the thing that mattered in the first place.

The process continues to demonstrate that the process is being followed.

It may still be protecting something important. It deserves to be asked.

Look for the moment movement stops

Choose one ordinary piece of work that people find unnecessarily difficult.

Follow it with the person doing it. Watch where it waits, where information gets copied, and where someone has to explain the same thing again.

Ask what each step is there to achieve.

This is more revealing than beginning with a large discussion about culture. You can see the actual arrangement, including the parts that work well and need to be protected.

You may find a missing decision. You may find unclear responsibility. You may find that two teams each think the other one needs a report.

Sometimes the useful discovery is that a step is essential, and the real obstacle sits somewhere else.

Make one permission clear

Select one change small enough to try and meaningful enough to notice.

Perhaps a team can resolve a recurring customer problem within an agreed limit. Perhaps a report can lose a page. Perhaps an approval can sit with the person who has the information to make it.

Make the permission explicit. Make responsibility clear too.

Otherwise the organisation can announce that people are empowered while continuing to ask them to check everything first. That is quite a confusing gift.

Come back after the trial and ask what happened. Did work move more easily? Was something valuable lost? What did the person doing it learn?

A modest change that survives an ordinary week is worth paying attention to.

Let purpose help you choose

The aim is to make worthwhile work possible.

Organisational purpose can help identify what deserves protection and what has become habit. Overcoming inertia is partly about finding a beginning; inside an organisation, it also involves making that beginning available to somebody.

And before adding new technology, including AI, look at the arrangement you are asking it to accelerate.

There is something hopeful about this.

A good team may already have enough imagination. It may need one less obstacle between an idea and a useful consequence.

If there is a place in your organisation where everything keeps stopping, bring me that thing.