Why Nothing Ever Changes At Work

Ever sat in a meeting where the same problem gets rehashed for the nth time, only for nothing to change? Welcome to the world of organisational inertia—where analysis paralysis, over-collaboration, and a pathological fear of doing anything turn workplaces into graveyards of good intentions. This week, Jimmy and James dissect why companies (and the people in them) would rather sit on a nail than move an inch, and—more importantly—how to stop the rot.

From the “Plan Z” demand for impossible certainty to the “frozen middle” of middle managers trapped between reality and corporate delusion, they expose the absurdity of systems that reward inaction and punish risk. But it’s not all doom: they also serve up hard-won advice for breaking the cycle. Small changes beat grand transformations, persistence builds trust, and—yes—you do have more influence than you think.

Five key points:

• Analysis paralysis: Endless data-gathering as a substitute for decision-making.
• Over-collaboration: When “everyone must agree” means nothing ever happens.
• Fear of error: The career-saving art of doing nothing (and why it’s killing progress).
• Diffused ownership: The “Everybody-Somebody-Anybody-Nobody” fable, alive and well in your office.
• Small wins: How tiny, visible changes can outperform a 150-slide “transformation” deck.

Dry, unflinching, and packed with the kind of stories that’ll have you nodding (or weeping) in recognition.

Transcript

Speaker 3 0:03

Hello, I'm James. Hi, I'm Jimmy, and welcome to A Job Done Well. The podcast that helps you improve your performance and enjoyment at work

James 0:15

afternoon. How are you?

Jimmy 0:16

I'm good, James. How are you? And

James 0:18

now today we are gonna talk about organisational inertia. You know that sensation when you're in a meeting and you think, "We've talked about this so many fucking times, and nobody has done anything yet." So that's what we're gonna talk about. It's gonna be exciting. I like a bit of inertia But before we get into that, we are not going to be recording over the summer. The sun is high, and people go on holiday, and so they don't listen to us. So shortly, come summer holidays, we're gonna back away from the podcast for a couple of months. But before we do that oh, I suppose we've got a request

Jimmy 0:53

Yeah. we're gonna start thinking about season four what would you like to hear us cover? What subjects, what challenges? What questions do you have for us? A reasonable percentage of our episodes do come from our audience, so it's just a, a little nudge to say if there's anything that you like or don't like, wanna hear more of, less

James 1:12

Please.

Jimmy 1:12

let us

James 1:13

'Cause otherwise we just make shit up

Jimmy 1:15

Which we did

James 1:16

Yeah, so yeah, we're quite good at that as well. So inertia then. Have you ever, there you go, have you ever sat in a meeting where everybody bitches and moans and says everything's broken, and everybody nods, and everybody says, "We need to fix that." And you come back six months later and not a damn thing has changed? Does that sound familiar?

Jimmy 1:38

God, if I had, if I had a pound for every time I've had that experience,

James 1:42

You'd have

Jimmy 1:43

I

James 1:44

£7.43, yeah. So what we're gonna talk about is what drives that in organisations and what you can do to change it

Jimmy 1:51

Yeah, absolutely.,

James 1:52

So some of the frustrations, some examples of the type of things I I'm thinking about.. Several years ago, I will leave it at that so it won't protect the innocent, I worked for an organisation, and it was deciding where it was gonna put a new office block. Yeah. And should we put it in that city? Should we put it in this city? Should we expand over here? Should we expand over there? The conversation went on for it must have been two or three years, and people just wouldn't come to a conclusion. They wanted more analysis and more data. And it just went round and round and round. And to be honest with you, it almost didn't matter where we put the flipping office block. It was just a question of deciding and getting on with it.

Jimmy 2:35

Yeah.

James 2:36

Something. Yeah, absolutely. So for me, I think that is a good example of two of the issues we face. One is this just sort of, well, it's not very, it's not very sophisticated, but let's call it analytical masturbation. So this endless search for numbers and more numbers and more numbers but never being happy with what you've got. So there's one of the things that I was seeing

Jimmy 2:55

well, I think one of my examples, James, relates to that as well, I was in one organisation, and we were changing the way we had set up our suppliers. We were going from multiple suppliers down to one.

James 3:08

Yeah

Jimmy 3:09

So it was quite a big move for the organisation. But the people in the organisation wanted so much information about what we were gonna do, how we were gonna do it. Not just the right questions, 'cause there are-- it's appropriate to ask the right questions, but it was into the minutiae of what could ever go wrong. And we found ourselves having to work through scenarios that were beyond fantastic in terms of they could never happen. Asked me for a solution to one potential issue, and I sarcastically called it Plan Z. Because you have plan A, plan B. They wanted everything through

James 3:50

Right

Jimmy 3:51

Z. And, and actually that name stuck, and they called it

James 3:54

did they?

Jimmy 3:55

afterwards Plan Z. But sarcasm aside, they just wanted such a level of certainty, and it's back to your analysis paralysis point. You just get into that, "I want more, more, more data," and what you're trying to show is more and more certainty. And so many decisions in life, you can't have a hundred percent certainty. You just have to make a decision

James 4:17

Another example would be we had, worked for an organisation, every year they had what they called Quarter Four. And Quarter Four was at the year-end, everybody was running around like headless chickens to try and hit their end year targets. I was responsible for capacity management at the time. Can you imagine what that was like? Was everyone's forcing volume into the business, and we ain't got any people, and it happened every year. But the problem was, come the beginning of January the next year, everybody si- had a sigh of relief and forgot about it. But then nine months later, we went round the same path again. I swear it happened five or six years on the trot. So there's another thing. It's almost like, "Well, we've got through that. We can just put it behind us and go and focus on something more pleasant." So yeah, there's another example. The examples we've talked about, fairly senior level examples, but I've seen it in small teams shop floor stuff. So there's this spreadsheet that doesn't work or there's this work instruction that's rubbish. Well, someone fixed the spreadsheet, somebody's fixed the work instructions, but you can go round that as well

Jimmy 5:20

The number of times, James, and you don't look at how people do things and, you know, they talk about workarounds this workaround, how long has it been in place? And I... there's been workarounds that have been in place for years. Well, they're not workarounds, are they? They're just how you do things. But you've almost become accepting of the initial issue, the initial problem,

James 5:39

Yeah

Jimmy 5:40

you're never gonna fix it you've just got used to the workaround

James 5:43

so I suppose the question for me is, right, why do organisations tolerate these problems for so long? And actually, I mean, you know, I'm a lucky man. I've worked for some fairly intelligent organisations, or worked for a couple of not too fucking intelligent organisations as well, but some fairly intelligent ones. And then why do they just repeat the obvious mistakes? There's another one I think I've heard you bleat on about this before, but over-collaboration. Go on, tell me about over-collaboration

Jimmy 6:10

You see it in a lot of organisations. Stuff doesn't change because everyone's got to have a say, and everyone's got to agree. It's not just collaboration, it's unani- it's got to be unanimous. and I was working on one organisation recently, and they had a good idea about how they were gonna rationalise part of what they were doing, and it was a great idea. It really was a great idea. they'd been talking about this great idea for, for over two years, and it's just because everyone had to have a say.

James 6:42

That reminds me of something I read, actually, this morning. It's this point that in most organisations you have to persuade everybody that something's a good idea, right? You go, and if one person thinks it's not a good idea, it stops. Yeah?

Jimmy 6:59

Yeah.

James 6:59

But if you spin that on its head, right, and actually you have to persuade people that it's not a bad idea, then all of a sudden it just changes the mentality altogether. Yeah. It's about, "Well, it's not a bad idea. Let's have a go." So it's just how do you spin that mindset around?

Jimmy 7:16

But the reality is, James,, if you work that way, that you can only do things unanimously everyone thinks is a good idea, you won't be doing very much, will you? Because it's very difficult, particularly on big or important or complex or controversial things, to get absolutely everyone agreeing all the time If you step back, you can get irate about it's that quarter or it's that board paper or it's that process that's broken. problem with inertia, I think, is it's not just the point of inertia that, that is the problem. Inertia spreads, so you become accepting of one thing, and the next thing you know, you're accepting of another thing and another thing and another thing, it does infect things. It's almost like a disease that

James 8:09

Okay, so it's that nothing ever changes around here conversation. And actually, once you start to believe that nothing ever changes around here, nothing ever changes becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy

Jimmy 8:20

Exactly. But it starts off with some single points of inertia in your organisation. Then it builds and builds, and it becomes exactly as you said, nothing ever changes here

James 8:32

So let's just summarise that then. So three of the things which we talked about. So we talked about analysis paralysis, we talked about over-collaboration, we talked for, about a desire for certainty. But what, what do you think causes that and what are the underlying reasons, would you say?

Jimmy 8:48

So I think there's, a few things. The first one's probably worth discussing is just how you set things up, how you incentivise behavior within your organisation. And that's not just paid incentives, it's what's important, what's rewarded here.

James 9:05

So one of my friends, Rob Wilson, who's actually been a guest on the show, but he said to me once, "One man's waste is another man's career." Which, you, you know, it depends on what you're set up to do, Have you set your organization up in a way that, you know, you've just got conflicting incentives, and people never come to a conclusion, and 'cause they never come to a conclusion, nothing ever flipping happens. So I think that's one of the key things, actually, the incentives within the organization and what they do for people's behavior

Jimmy 9:31

Another reason is that people act out of fear, and it makes them about the risks that they are taking. The fear can be of something going wrong, but also people find that change is threatening. They get comfortable with the way things

James 9:48

Yeah, but there's here you go, I'm gonna be intellectual. You'll like this. Two types of errors, mate. The error of commission and the error of omission., So error of commission is when you do something that you shouldn't have done. An error of omission is when you don't do something that you should have done. But actually, you're more likely to get a good kicking for what you did do than what you didn't do. So actually, in a lot of organisations, the safest safest thing to do is nothing. Yeah. Sit down, you know, sit on your hands, wait and see what happens. Yeah, 'cause it- you're much more likely to get bollocked for doing something than not doing something

Jimmy 10:28

Yeah. So underlying fear drives inertia in organisations.

James 10:32

Well,

Jimmy 10:32

What else

James 10:33

is that that's an interesting line, isn't it? This whole thing. People aren't scared of change. You know, everybody's got an iPhone. We've moved to that change very quickly. People are scared of being changed, which actually links back to the underlying incentive points. Yeah? But if you're changing things, which will change the way people's, well, status, the pay people are paid, all of a sudden you get a whole host of brick walls coming up and reasons why people don't want to change. So yeah, fear, I think that's quite a big one

Jimmy 11:04

I do remember going into one organisation and talking to one of the very senior managers about, about what the organisation needed to do, and he was like, "Adam, we, we

James 11:14

Yeah

Jimmy 11:15

stuff. You know, there's so much here that needs to change. team over there needs to change. That team over there...

James 11:21

except

Jimmy 11:21

to change except me." He absolutely was adamant everyone in the organisation needs to

James 11:28

a problem but him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, which, yeah, it doesn't help the situation. All right, and so go on. Next one I think is this whole not my problem, right? So or to give it another more technical term, diffused ownership, right? When it's, you know, really not clear who owns a problem, and 'cause it's not clear who owns a problem nobody picks it up and runs with it

Jimmy 11:50

This is what you experience in a lot of organizations is your systems, your processes, like as a middle manager, they don't quite work, but you don't own them. So therefore, sometimes it can be hard to then work out, "Well, how do I, how do I change this?" And yeah, there's been a few organizations I've worked in where we've gone with the the old cliché of don't walk past bad service. If you see something that is broken, that is causing you to serve your customers badly, you need to do something about

James 12:20

Yeah

Jimmy 12:21

Whatever it is. Doesn't mean you have to fix it yourself, but you have to do

James 12:24

There's that old sort of little fable.. This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done, and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realised that Everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done. I know, all right, it's a bit flipping cutesy, but that is how it feels in organisations, yeah? It's things where there is nobody accountable for it or people feeling that they shouldn't touch things that nobody's accountable for

Jimmy 13:08

Another thing that I think sits behind a lot of this is the, desire that people have to defend the status quo. And, whi-which can be quite surprising 'cause you can be working in a very difficult situation or, have some real problems around you, but still people will defend what is, difficult and broken. And I think there's a few reasons why people do that. One is,

James 13:32

Yeah.

Jimmy 13:33

ego. You know, I

James 13:34

Yeah.

Jimmy 13:34

up,

James 13:35

Yeah, yeah, yeah

Jimmy 13:35

up. This is my operations, my business. I don't wanna... nobody wants to be told their baby's ugly at the end of the day. As well as ego, I think there are a couple other things at play. I think people do fear change. You know, no matter how bad things are, you are certain about what you've got, people fear the unknown. Even though it almost certainly will be better, they still fear the unknown. It's back to that old saying,

James 14:00

Well,

Jimmy 14:00

you

James 14:00

yeah

Jimmy 14:02

And I think there's a bit of the cyclical nature of organizations, you know, and you can get swept up in the latest kind of things that are happening. But then it goes back to how it was. You get a new leader in, and they start saying, "We're going to ch- I'm gonna change what..." I remember somebody said to me once when I joined an organization, after about a month, I'd been talking about things that we would be doing, and I had a one-to-one with this person. She said to me, "Love what you're telling us, but, I'll be interested to see how many people are just sitting there waiting for you to move on,

James 14:35

No, 'cause they've heard it before.

Jimmy 14:37

here." And that

James 14:37

yeah, yeah

Jimmy 14:38

the inertia. Yeah, that was the inertia. It was easier to keep your head down and wait for the next, the person to move on and the next person to come on. So I think that all part-- plays part of, you know, defending the status

James 14:49

there's another one actually, which is, Can I be bothered? And I think in a lot of organizations you get that. Have I told you my story of the dog and the nail? So anyway, a big old country house in Virginia. You've got this big veranda, two good old boys sitting on the veranda, and there's this hound dog, and this hound dog's sitting on the veranda, and it's howling to itself. Do you like that? That's my howling talk. I think that's pretty good. Anyway, yeah,

Jimmy 15:14

You can tell you're not a dog

James 15:15

So anyway, it's howling to itself, and one of the good old boys says to the other good old boy, "So why is that dog lying there howling?" And he says, "It's 'cause he's sitting on a nail." So he looks at him and says, "Well, why doesn't he get up and walk and move away from it then?" He says, "Well, 'cause it's not hurting him that much." But there is just this, you know, can I be bothered? Is it really that bad, or should I just put up with it? And I think there is, yeah, there's an element of that. Can that be us, or is it organisational exhaustion? Maybe that's a better way of putting it. But, you know, people stop believing change is real. They've seen so many failed transa-transformations and so m- They've seen so many restructures and leadership churn, and after a while you just think, "Well, been there, seen it, done it. I'll just keep me head down and see what happens next."

Jimmy 16:02

So if you are, a senior manager running an organisation, you need to pay attention to some of those themes, right? So, to avoid inertia in your organisation, they're some of the things you can change. But what about if you're a middle manager? How do you think about this inertia where you're caught in it, you know, you're

James 16:21

Well, the trap for a middle manager, s- quite often I think, is they can see the problems really obviously, but they lack the authority to solve them. Yeah? And they sit there absorbing the pressure from both directions and they almost become the translators between reality and ambition, right? Do you know? So I think that drives a whole load of bad behaviors maybe in that population

Jimmy 16:47

Interesting point here, James,- I've worked in a number of organisations and worked with senior teams, thing that they would point to in terms of inertia is

James 16:59

Yeah, they talk about the frozen middle. Yeah, yeah, yeah

Jimmy 17:02

Exactly, the marzipan layer, the permafrost layer. There's all sorts of derogatory terms I've, I've heard used about that group i-in an organisation, but not really understanding the themes that we talk around that are driving inertia throughout the organisation. It isn't the fault and the behaviours of those middle managers. Those middle managers are responding to

James 17:25

Yeah, and I totally get that. It's, totally agree, right? So if you've got this problem, it is a senior manager problem, right? If your organisation is disengaged, yeah, running an engagement survey and beating people if they don't give you a five is not the solution. Don't be surprised. Yeah. However, I suppose how does that materialise within your middle layers of your organisation, right? So you just get this sort of well, cynicism. Yeah. Endemic, right? Or learned helplessness. We believe we can't do anything about it, so we just don't do anything about it, right?

Jimmy 17:59

Yeah.

James 18:00

the other two things you get, which I think are worse still, are you get this sort of survival behavior, which is, for God's sake, bend down, here comes another one. And we'll just wait and see. Or worse still, you just get quiet disengagement where people, you know, watching the clock until five o'clock ticks up, and then they, they get out and walk away, and they're just in it for the money. So those are the sort of issues I think which happen within that, that part of the organisation. But it is, you're absolutely right. It is a senior management problem, and they should be addressing it However, right, this is all terribly, terribly negative. What can you do, right? So let's just say, well, as we have been, you're sitting in the middle of some organisation, What can you do about it? What sort of, what hints and tips would you give?

Jimmy 18:44

We are guilty at times of thinking that there's nothing that you can do about things. it may be true about certain aspects of the way the organisation runs, but if you think about what you can control, you can control a lot of the environment that your team work in. A good example of this is, in one organisation I, I worked in, we had a big contact centre with, 30 different teams in, and there was a massive variation in the performance of those teams. They were all doing the same job the same pay, same conditions, all the rest of it. The difference was the manager that they had in the organisation, and that difference was how that manager treated them, the environment they created around them, how they coached and helped them to do their job. That is one of the areas, the day-to-day contact that you have with your team and how you're managing them, communicating them, motivating them, rewarding them, praising. You can do a whole load

James 19:47

Yeah, but that comes down to enthusiasm, right? Yeah, 'cause actually what, what you just told me is there were some managers which were more enthusiastic than others, and that enthusiasm rubs off largely. And it, for me, it's this whole circle of influence and circle of control, right? So the point again, don't worry about what you worry about, worry about what you can control. And I think that is really powerful. You know, go and focus on the things you can do something about, and don't worry about the things you can't

Jimmy 20:15

In the things that you can, the point that I was making about how different managers manage their teams, that stops inertia

James 20:23

Yeah, yeah,

Jimmy 20:23

into your teams.

James 20:25

I think small changes trump grand transformation plans. You know, 'cause it's very easy to pull together some whizz-bang deck, you know, 150 slides, and go and ask for, oh, half a billion quid. But really small stuff that gets changed, and people seeing it changed and moving on it, that's what really starts to unlock that inertia. Yeah

Jimmy 20:46

One of the great things you do in one organisation we worked together was help teams understand what those small changes were and how they could impact those small changes. And the majority of them, they loved

James 20:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah

Jimmy 20:59

those small changes. They had loads they could tell you about. And then when you actually analysed with them how they solve those small changes with ways that were in their control, quite often they could change a lot of them. So back to the point, something big over here may not be changing, within your team's life you can change a whole lot, and that

James 21:21

Well, and I think two things. So, you know, people say it's not strategic, but if you make small changes, it's a bit like... So my analogy would be bridges to islands. You make a small change, you create a bridge to a different island, you can then walk onto that island and have a look round, and you realise, "Oh, we could do this, we could do this, we could do this instead." So it, it sort of expands your your geography. It makes you think about your problems differently. So that's the first thing. Second thing is lots of small changes make a really big difference. But thirdly, it just people just get enthused. They see things changing, they want it to happen. Nobody wants to come to work and be bored. So yeah, sorry, I'm bang on, but small stuff I just think is fundamentally important. The other thing that links to that really well is this whole thing about, everybody talks about it, quick wins, but visible wins create momentum, yeah? Nothing ever changes here. Well, what about that spreadsheet? Yeah, okay. Right. So it's, Yeah. Don't worry about what you can't do, worry about what you can and get some momentum going.

Jimmy 22:17

Yeah. And, and at the end of the day, back to your point about big change, big transformation is the crack cocaine of corporate life, everyone's addicted to it. They all want it, but actually the reality is where the gold dust is, is in the small stuff. And so as a middle manager who's stuck in this, environment, you can focus on how you lead your team, and you can focus on the small change that you can implement, and that'll be far more meaningful the fact that, you aren't changing the big stuff every year

James 22:50

And I think there are two more things that link to that, I think. First of all is, right, you just gotta stick at it. It just cr- persistence,

Jimmy 22:59

Yeah

James 22:59

right? We can't do that. Well, we will do that. Well, we will do that. 'Cause, you know, you've got two options. You can either suck it up as it is, or you can change stuff, right? So if you're gonna change stuff, you have to be persistent, right? But if you are persistent, then that will generate trust in the people around you, 'cause they will see that you're trying to make things happen. And wouldn't you know, people need some belief, and that is driven by trust. So if you can get people trusting you and engaged with it, you know, really powerful. And then the other thing is, I think you've got a lot more influence than you think you have, right? 'Cause easy to say "Oh, I can't do this, this, and this," but you know, you can restructure your meetings. You can do something about your local culture. You can do something about that small process. You can do something about team norms, yeah? You can do something about honesty and clarity. All of these things matter. In fact, matter an awful lot. But d- yeah, what can you do? That's my real point.

Jimmy 24:00

Overall, it's back to your point, control the controllables. Don't underestimate what's controllable, at the end of the day, that stops inertia hitting your team and

James 24:12

Yeah, and it, you know, might be a bit of a throwaway line, but most successful change is much quieter than an organisation expects. You know, it's not big bang stuff, it's just getting on with it. So yeah, those are the things I think you can do

Jimmy 24:24

Yeah So in summary, James, we're saying that organisational inertia some way or another is almost always inevitable in organisation. I think we've seen it wherever we've worked, and the danger, the risk that it brings is that it spreads And next thing you know, ever changes here becomes

James 24:45

Yeah.

Jimmy 24:45

company

James 24:46

A- and if you are, if you are in the senior position, right, you have to do something about it, but you have to play at the, you know, the, the risk, the fear, the incentives, the reward level. That's, that's what you're paid to do, so you address that. But for the people who can't address those issues

Jimmy 25:03

There is plenty that, that is within their control in terms of the environment, the work, and the small changes that they can make to avoid inertia creeping in on

James 25:14

So we can't do anything.

Jimmy 25:15

Well, I hope you've enjoyed this week's episode, and,

James 25:19

Yeah, and we look forward to our barrage of thoughts about what we could talk about next season

Jimmy 25:23

Absolutely.

James 25:23

recognition

Speaker 25:26

We cover a whole host of topics on this podcast,

Speaker 2 25:29

from purpose to corporate jargon,

Speaker 25:31

but always focused on one thing, getting the job done well.

Speaker 2 25:35

Easier said than done. So if you've got unhappy customers or employees, bosses or regulators breathing down your neck,

Speaker 25:44

if your backlogs are out of control and your costs are spiraling, and that big IT transformation project that you've been promised just keeps failing to deliver,

Speaker 2 25:53

we can help. If you need to improve your performance, your team's performance, or your organization's, get in touch at jimmy@ajobdonewell.com or james@ajobdonewell.com.