When organisations become overwhelmed, the problem is not always a lack of effort. More often, people are working extremely hard. Projects are moving, meetings are happening, reports are being written, decisions are being escalated and teams are doing their best to keep important work moving forward. The problem is that too many important things have become competing priorities. Each priority may be entirely valid in isolation. A financial target, a customer commitment, a reg

Organisations rarely become complex by design. Very few leadership teams set out to create confusion, duplication, slow decision-making, blurred accountability or fragmented delivery. Most complexity builds gradually, through decisions that made sense at the time. A new governance group is created to manage a risk. A workaround is introduced to keep a service moving. A project is launched to solve an urgent problem. A new system is implemented before the operating model is fu

Most organisations are much better at promising benefits than realising them. A business case is written. Savings are estimated. Productivity improvements are described. Customer experience will improve. Processes will become more efficient. Technology will reduce manual work. A new operating model will release capacity. A transformation programme will deliver measurable value. On paper, the logic is often persuasive. The problem is that the benefits described in a business c