Organisations fail in patterns.
Every organisation believes its problem is unique. It almost never is. The same failures recur, with the same mechanisms — so they can be named. Here are 40, arranged by where in the organisation they break.
Set direction
Can the organisation establish and hold a shared sense of what matters?
Competing Norths
Nobody holds one direction strongly enough to resolve competing interpretations, so each function builds its own version of what matters.
On sightLeadership prioritises customer experience. Finance cuts service capacity. Operations rewards speed. Marketing promises personal care. Everyone is aligned — to a different north.
The View from Upstairs
Direction is built from the reports reaching senior leaders rather than the conditions experienced by the people doing the work.
On sightLeadership commits to halving response times. The frontline knows the system alone takes longer than the new target allows.
Nod and Carry On
The organisation publicly adopts a new direction while its budgets, targets and rewards keep pointing at the old one.
On sightTransformation is declared the top priority. Teams are still assessed against their existing BAU targets, so it happens after hours — or not at all.
Priority Pile-Up
Everything is called a priority, so immediate pressure decides what actually gets done.
On sightThe executive team names twelve critical priorities. Teams carry on with BAU because nobody has said what can stop.
Strategic Drift
Direction changes through accumulated local choices and quiet workarounds without the organisation ever deciding to change it.
On sightCustomer access remains the stated priority. Successive budget cuts, approval steps and service reductions gradually make access harder.
The Inherited Map
The organisation keeps following a strategy after the assumptions and conditions that produced it have expired.
On sightA three-year growth strategy survives a merger, a funding cut and the closure of the service expected to generate the growth.
Target Takeover
A measure meant to indicate progress becomes the work itself.
On sightA contact centre is rewarded for closing cases quickly. Closure times improve while repeat calls and unresolved problems climb.
The Fire of the Day
The nearest urgent problem repeatedly becomes the organisation's direction.
On sightMonday is cost. Wednesday is media. Friday is a ministerial request. Each urgency resets the work already underway.
Make decisions
Can the organisation turn direction into real choices?
Corridor Veto
The meeting makes the decision. The corridor quietly unmakes it.
On sightThe programme board approves Friday's launch. A watercooler conversation afterwards raises concerns and the launch is paused. No new decision is made or recorded.
Ghost Decision
Everyone is acting on a decision nobody can locate.
On sightWork begins because everyone thought the proposal had been approved. The minutes show discussion, but no decision, owner or agreed scope.
Decision Hoarder
One person keeps decisions others could make, creating a queue around themselves and teaching people to route around them.
On sightA campaign waits three weeks while the chief executive rewrites captions the marketing team was hired to decide.
Showroom Trap
A decision is made before the necessary people, evidence or consequences are in the room.
On sightA platform is chosen straight after a supplier demo. Procurement later finds the contract problem. Technology finds it can't integrate. Staff find it can't do what they need.
Unanimity Tax
Agreement from everyone becomes the price of moving, so the least-ready person holds an unofficial veto.
On sightA steering group commissions a third round of feedback because one member is still uncomfortable. Nobody knows who can decide without unanimous support.
Local Logic
Every team makes a sensible decision for itself. Together, the decisions make no sense.
On sightFour functions independently buy four customer-management systems. Each solves a local problem. None talks to the others.
Split Authority
Two people can each stop a decision and each insist the other owns making it. It dies in the gap between them.
On sightThe functional leader approves a campaign but says the sponsor owns the launch. The sponsor says approval belongs to the functional leader.
Decision by Expiry
Nobody makes the decision, so a deadline, default or external event makes it for them.
On sightLeaders spend three months discussing whether to change suppliers. The cancellation date passes and the existing contract renews itself.
Move information
Can reality travel through the organisation without being distorted, delayed or suppressed?
A Hollow Forum
A formal forum keeps its place in the governance structure after it has stopped performing the function it exists to perform.
On sightSame name, same members, same box on the diagram — no live decisions, challenge or coordination. At LGWM, the cross-agency group held no meetings for nine months.
→ Case 01 · LGWMPoliteness Filter
Disagreement and bad news are softened as they travel upward until leaders receive a version of reality nobody below them believes.
On sightThe room nods through an unrealistic plan. The moment the leader leaves, everyone agrees it won't work. That conclusion never returns to the room.
The Comms Chasm
Comms or marketing is asked to explain and publish something before the organisation has decided enough to explain it.
On sightThe campaign is described as stuck in marketing. Marketing is still waiting for someone to confirm the offer, price, eligibility and final approver.
Data Hoarding
Information is treated as territory, forcing other teams to work from partial data, estimates or personal favours.
On sightOne function holds the customer data and releases only prepared summaries. Other teams can't test its conclusions or plan independently.
Shadow Systems
When the official system can't be trusted or practically used, the real work moves elsewhere — and takes the truth with it.
On sightThe central dashboard says the programme is green. The project manager's private spreadsheet holds six overdue actions and a major launch risk.
Status Carousel
The same information circles through meeting after meeting without producing a decision, owner or action.
On sightThe same red risk appears in six consecutive meetings. Each time it's discussed. The action column still says “further discussion required.”
Translation Loss
Information changes at every handoff until the version reaching decision-makers no longer resembles the original.
On sightFrontline staff report customers unable to access a service. By the time it reaches leadership it has become “some minor onboarding friction.”
Institutional Amnesia
Knowledge lives in individuals rather than the organisation, so departures erase the reasons behind past decisions.
On sightA new leadership team commissions a review almost identical to one completed two years earlier. Nobody knows it exists, or why its recommendations were rejected.
Deliver
Can the organisation convert decisions into coordinated action?
Accountability Fog
Responsibility is spread across enough roles, teams and governance layers that everyone owns a part and nobody owns whether the whole thing works.
On sightProduct completed the design. Legal reviewed it. Technology built it. Marketing waited for approval. The launch date passed, but every team completed its task. Everyone did their job. The job did not get done.
→ Case 01 · LGWMZombie Project
A project that has lost its purpose keeps consuming time and budget because stopping it would need someone to own the ending.
On sightNo active sponsor, and nobody can state its expected outcome. It still has a budget line, a weekly stand-up and four assigned staff.
Pilot Purgatory
A pilot works well enough to keep extending but is never assessed conclusively enough to scale or stop.
On sightThe pilot enters its fourth year and sixth funding extension. Still temporary, with no agreed criteria for adoption or closure.
Phantom Capacity
The plan counts people the work can't actually use.
On sightThe team appears to have five full-timers. One is seconded, one handles incidents, two carry unrecorded BAU. The plan still assumes five.
Scoreboard Bias
Work that's easy to count is treated as worth more than work whose contribution is slower, preventative or harder to measure.
On sightMarketing reports leads and conversions weekly, so it appears to outperform policy, risk and relationship teams whose value won't fit the same scoreboard.
Tool Tax
People spend so long feeding the systems meant to support delivery that the systems start reducing it.
On sightThe same update must be entered into the project system, CRM, risk register, slide deck and monthly report.
Dependency Blindness
A plan commits other teams to work, timing or capacity they never agreed to provide.
On sightA campaign date is announced before the digital team knows it must rebuild the website. Marketing looks late when the unplanned dependency fails.
The Last-Mile Gap
The organisation treats an internally completed output as delivered before anybody can actually use it.
On sightThe new system launches on schedule. Training, support and frontline processes are unfinished, so staff keep using the old spreadsheets.
Adapt
Can the organisation respond when the evidence says something must change?
Reorg Reflex
A problem in direction, decisions, trust or delivery is answered by redrawing reporting lines.
On sightDelivery is deteriorating because priorities conflict and decisions take months. The response is to move three teams under a new executive. Boxes move. The dysfunction keeps its job.
Consultation Theatre
Feedback is invited after the only decision that matters has already been made.
On sightStaff are asked which of three restructuring models they prefer. All three remove the same function, and keeping it is not an option.
Change Pile-Up
New change is launched before previous change has landed, leaving unfinished structures, systems and expectations stacked on each other.
On sightThe third restructure in eighteen months begins while roles from the first are unfilled and processes from the second unfinished.
Year Zero
Every new leader behaves as though the organisation began when they arrived.
On sightAn incoming chief executive pauses an unfinished transformation, commissions another strategy review and replaces its language — before finding out why the original work began.
Permanent Workaround
A temporary fix survives long enough to become the unofficial operating model.
On sightA spreadsheet built during a two-week outage is still allocating work three years later.
The Learning Shelf
A review produces lessons, but no decision, owner or change to how the work is done.
On sightThe post-incident review is accepted and filed. The next project hits the same approval failure, because nothing in the process changed.
Yesterday's Proof
Past success is treated as evidence the same approach still works now.
On sightA programme keeps its funding because it produced strong results five years ago, despite three years of declining use.
The Exception Defence
Recurring evidence is explained away one instance at a time, so the organisation never recognises the pattern.
On sightSix exit interviews name the same leadership behaviour. Each departure is separately put down to personality, ambition or poor fit.
Naming is the discipline, not the decoration.
A pattern only enters the library when it clears five tests. Most candidates don't. That's the point — a name you can't stand behind is worse than no name at all.
- It recurs — across different organisations, not once.
- It has a mechanism — you can explain how it works, not just that it's bad.
- It explains in one sentence.
- It's recognised on sight — people see their own organisation in it.
- It can be evidenced — from the record, not from opinion.
The states above are honest about where each pattern sits. Filed means it's been evidenced in a published case. Working means it's real and defined, but the case write-up is still to come. Nothing here claims proof it doesn't have.
Recognise one in your own organisation?
That's the whole point of naming them. The next step is evidence.
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