One pattern I keep seeing in pressured organisations is that good people start working around each other.
It rarely begins with ego or obvious dysfunction. More often, it happens in organisations full of decent, capable people trying to do good work in difficult conditions. But as pressure builds, behaviour starts to shift. People become more cautious. Teams become more protective. Decisions take longer. Ownership becomes less clear. Leaders start carrying more than they should because they no longer trust things will move without them.
What looks like poor teamwork or silos is often something more human than that. People are adapting to an organisation that has become harder to get things done in.
For me, two disciplines sit underneath this: collaboration and accountability. When collaboration becomes too heavy and accountability becomes too blurred, good people stop working with each other and start working around each other.
I’ve explored this in more depth in my latest article on my Substack: The Strategic Leader: https://thestrategicleader.substack.com/p/why-good-people-start-working-around?r=6y0dfb
I work with founders and senior leaders when things become more complex than they used to be — decisions take longer, people issues carry more weight, and there’s less space to think clearly.
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