Every organization has longstanding problems that defy easy fixes. Missed connections that lead to work being duplicated. Two departments that maintain overlapping systems, each claiming ownership of the same key information. Cross-departmental processes with no clear owner, where work quietly stalls at a hand-off.
Problems like these may have already absorbed one or more formal change efforts that produced a period of improvement and then eroded once attention moved elsewhere. The problems don’t persist because no one has tried to address them. They persist because they are not susceptible to direct intervention. Structural and cultural factors, such as the way different teams define success, lead people to reject proposed changes. What’s worse, repeated attempts to solve these problems directly can entrench them more deeply, fostering an “us vs. them” mentality, breeding cynicism, and creating preemptive resistance to later change initiatives.
Instead of addressing these problems head-on, pursue lower-stakes initiatives to reshape the environment. If two departments claim ownership of the organization’s system of record, don’t arbitrate the claim – build integrations with other systems that make the dispute irrelevant. If a cross-departmental workflow keeps failing for lack of ownership, create infrastructure that makes the workflow easier to accomplish or incentives that make it more desirable to own.
Tackling longstanding problems in this way takes time. But it is a more reliable way to drive organizational change than rerunning initiatives that teams have already rejected. Small wins add up, building interdependence and trust across organizational fault lines. Over time, this shifts how groups perceive their incentives, obligations, and ability to drive the organization’s success. Accumulate enough of these wins, and the resolution to the original problem stops being a source of conflict. Instead, it becomes a natural next step that the organization is ready to take.