The Human Risk Files - Organisations Don’t Fail Overnight. They Drift.

There are moments in your career that quietly change the way you see the world.

Not because someone teaches you a new model or introduces you to the latest leadership theory, but because you’ve sat in enough rooms, listened to enough conversations and watched enough organisations wrestle with the same problems that eventually you stop seeing the problem people are talking about. You start seeing the one they aren’t.

I’ve spent more than twenty-five years sitting in boardrooms, executive meetings and CEO offices. On the surface, every engagement has been different. Different industries. Different personalities. Different challenges.

And yet, after all this time, I can’t help but notice that they almost always begin in exactly the same way.

Someone tells me they have a people problem- a senior leader isn’t performing; there’s conflict in the executive team; turnover is too high; the founder can’t let go; the culture isn’t what it used to be; the team isn’t aligned; the CEO isn’t confident in the key people around them. And on it goes. 

It’s always framed as a problem with people and i have always found that fascinating. 

Why do we instinctively zoom in on the individual? Why is our first question, “Who’s not doing what they should be doing?” Why don’t we spend the same amount of energy asking what is happening in the system those people are part of?

Perhaps it’s because that’s much harder to see.

I’ve never really been interested in looking at organisations through neat boxes on an organisational chart. That’s never told me very much. I’ve always been far more interested in what happens between the boxes. The relationships. The conversations. The decisions that get made, and perhaps more importantly, the ones that don’t. Because that’s where organisations either become healthier or begin to drift.

I think we’ve become very good at solving the problem that’s in front of us.

If turnover is high, we recruit.

If someone raises a grievance, we investigate.

If leadership capability is lacking, we send people to a programme.

If the culture feels flat, we run an engagement survey.

None of those things are wrong, they all have their place. But over the years I’ve started asking myself a different question. What if they’re all responding to symptoms?

Recruiters are brilliant at finding talent because that’s what they’re designed to do. Employment lawyers help organisations navigate legal risk because that’s their expertise. Leadership consultants build capability. Coaches unlock potential. Every profession views the organisation through the lens of the problem it exists to solve.

But who is looking at the whole system? Who is asking why these issues keep emerging in the first place? That’s the question I’ve become obsessed with.

Because what I’ve come to believe is that organisations don’t fail because of one catastrophic event. They drift. Often not dramatically, often it is quiet, a felt sense, a micro decision here and a choice there. 

They drift every time a leader avoids a conversation because they don’t quite know how to have it.

They drift when poor behaviour is excused because someone is commercially valuable (wow, I have lost count of the number of times I have faced into this one with clients). 

They drift when an executive team mistakes being polite for being aligned.

They drift when people stop saying what they really think because experience has taught them it’s safer not to.

I’ve watched this happen hundreds of times and I’ve also lived it. One of the hardest lessons of my own career wasn’t watching another organisation drift. It was recognising that my own business had done exactly the same thing. So focused on the targets, the external pressure to achieve, I stopped seeing the system, stopped wanting to see the system, and to address the lynch pins that were missing to optimise culture and commercials. And why? Because I allowed my nervous system to operate in flight or fight for so long, I didn’t have the capacity. And I paid the price for that. 

There wasn’t one terrible decision that changed everything overnight. There were simply lots of tiny decisions that, at the time, all felt reasonable, from a place the capacity I had at the time. Listening to advice instead of trusting my instincts. Ignoring the little voice telling me something didn’t feel right. Putting off conversations because there always seemed to be a more urgent priority.

It wasn’t until much later that I realised those weren’t isolated decisions. They were all connected. And that’s probably the single biggest belief I hold today. Everything is connected.

I don’t just believe that about organisations. I believe it about people. About leadership. About culture. About trust. Nothing exists in isolation. Every decision changes a relationship. Every relationship shapes trust. Trust influences the quality of conversations. Conversations determine the decisions we make. Those decisions create the conditions people either thrive in or quietly disconnect from.

That’s why I’ve stopped asking, “What’s wrong with these people?”

I’m much more interested in asking, “What conditions made this behaviour inevitable?”

For me, that’s where the real work begins. That is how organisations remain coherent.

Increasingly, I believe leadership has less to do with having all the answers and much more to do with creating environments where people can bring their best thinking, challenge respectfully, admit mistakes and contribute fully. Everything else follows from this - performance, innovation, loyalty and even fun!

Years ago, I believed loyalty and fun were the ingredients of a great organisation. Now, I believe they are outcomes. They emerge naturally when people are aligned with meaningful contribution, when they feel safe enough to tell the truth, and when the organisation remains connected to who it is and why it exists. They are signs of health, not strategies for creating it. Perhaps that’s why I’ve become less interested in solving the visible problem. The visible problem is rarely where transformation begins. Transformation begins when leaders become curious enough to look beneath it.

To ask different questions. To notice different patterns. To have the conversation they’ve been avoiding. To create different conditions.

I’ve spent much of my career helping leaders solve complex human problems. Today, I would describe my work differently. I help organisations notice where they are drifting before the drift becomes decline. Because organisations don’t fail overnight. They lose themselves quietly.

And if drift happens one conversation at a time…

Then finding our way back begins the very same way.