Everything is working exactly as designed. And that’s the problem.
Think of your operations right now. The activities, the processes, the systems.
They’re working exactly as designed to produce the outcomes you’re seeing today.
We have a problem when the outcomes we get aren’t the outcomes we want.
And fixing such problems takes more than willpower. We need to fix our systems instead.
As James Clear wrote in Atomic Habits, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
Or, as Stafford Beer wrote, “The purpose of a system is what it does”.
That’s why the most effective organisations focus on systemic improvement rather than just pushing people harder.
To adapt Scott Adam’s words from “The Joy of Work”:
People who make systems work get happy and rich.
People who work hard get tired.
Handcrafted insight 