“Every organisation is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” – W. Edwards Deming, lecture and writings, 1980s

 

The Ritual of Rewriting

There is a moment, often at the start of a week or month, when the “to do” list is reopened.

Items are reordered. A few are rewritten more precisely. Some are carried over, perhaps with slightly firmer wording this time. Others drop away. The priority list looks cleaner. More deliberate.

This is not disorganisation. Far from it. This is conscientiousness in action. It is the instinct of someone who takes responsibility seriously. Under pressure, refining priorities restores a sense of clarity. Things are named. Sequenced. Brought back into view.

And yet, despite the tidier list, the underlying load often feels much the same. Not crisis, nor chaos. Just a familiar weight that never quite lifts.

It’s a pattern many experienced leaders recognise, and there’s something worth noticing in the gap between the tidy list and the unchanged load.

 

When Order Becomes Reassurance

Prioritising is a powerful instinct because it works.

In the early stages of building the business, better organisation really did reduce strain. Clearer focus meant faster progress. Attention directed well often translated directly into results.

Sorting complexity into manageable parts is part of how many founders earned their success.

There is something deeply reassuring about putting work in order. It signals intent. It makes leadership visible, even if only to oneself. The act of ordering suggests control.

The difficulty is that as organisations grow, complexity changes its nature. It becomes less about sequence and more about structure. Less about what comes first, and more about who carries what.

Reordering the work still tidies the surface but leaves the underlying organisational structure untouched. The business has evolved – more people, more interdependencies, more decisions requiring interpretation – but the habit of sequencing persists.

This is where the comfort begins to mask the limitation.

What once reduced strain continues to be applied, even when the shape of the business has shifted around it.

 

The Recurring Top Three on the Priority List

Over time, certain items on the priority list begin to look familiar.

Strengthening the leadership team. Clarifying roles. Removing decision bottlenecks. Raising capability in key areas. Improving cross-functional coordination.

They are not trivial; they remain important for good reason. But they recur.

They appear near the top of the list in January. They resurface in March. They reappear around mid-year. The language changes slightly. The intent remains.

This is not laziness, nor is it a failure of will. It is simply worth recognising.

When something remains a “top priority” for months on end, it may not be a task awaiting attention. It may be a reflection of how authority and ownership are currently concentrated.

The business moves forward in parts. Revenue grows. New people join. Systems improve. Yet some structural themes remain stubbornly central to the leader.

These patterns don’t disappear through sequencing. They shift only when ownership shifts.

 

Sequencing Work vs Shifting Ownership

A list answers one question well: what should I focus on next?

It does not answer another, more structural question: who ultimately carries this?

As businesses mature, leadership pressure often accumulates not because tasks are poorly ordered, but because decision rights remain clustered around the founder or CEO. Judgement, interpretation, and final approval continue to sit in the same place. The list gets longer not because work is poorly managed, but because more decisions are routed to the same desk.

Sequencing organises effort.

Ownership determines load.

Authority and responsibility are intertwined. When responsibility moves without authority, friction follows. When authority remains concentrated, so does the load.

Under uncertainty, it feels prudent to retain decisions. The consequences matter. Reputation matters. People matter. A leader who has built something substantial is understandably cautious about letting significant authority travel too far from their desk.

That caution is rational. It is also one of the ways dependency persists.

In exploring delegating for effective execution, I have noted how delegation is rarely about activity alone. It is about trust, clarity, and the transfer of decision-making authority. Without that transfer, the appearance of delegation can mask continued centrality.

A refined priority list does not resolve that.

 

Delegation That Doesn’t Relieve

Many leaders believe they have delegated extensively, and in many respects they have.

Tasks move outward. Teams take responsibility for delivery. Meetings are chaired by others. Reports are produced independently.

Yet the leader remains the final interpreter. The safety net. The person who clarifies ambiguity, resolves disputes, signs off critical decisions, and absorbs residual risk.

Responsibility travels. Authority hesitates.

The result is not relief, but duplication. Work expands outward; decision-making remains central.

Over time, a familiar cycle emerges:

• Centralised judgement.
• Repeated involvement.
• Time compression.
• Reprioritising.
• Continued centrality.

The list of priorities is adjusted, the calendar reorganised. Yet the underlying design remains intact.

This is particularly common in well-run, conscientious organisations. In businesses where trust matters deeply, and where the leader has earned credibility through being close to the detail, stepping back is not a simple administrative act. It is a structural shift.

Without that shift, the same themes continue to rise to the surface.

In articles exploring team development for sustainable advantage and building trust within an A-Team culture, the underlying message has been similar: capability and trust are structural, not cosmetic. They are not resolved by attention alone. They require authority to be distributed as well as responsibility.

 

The Design That Produces the Pattern

W. Edwards Deming observed that every organisation is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.

That sentence can feel uncomfortable, not because it blames anyone, but because it reframes the conversation. It’s not a slogan. It’s a mirror.

If recurring overload persists, it may not be a matter of discipline or effort. It may be the natural output of how authority, risk, and trust are currently arranged.

If certain decisions continue to return to the same desk, that is not an accident. It reflects design.

Reprioritising in that context is entirely rational. It is an attempt to manage the consequences of a structure that has not shifted. It restores short-term order without altering long-term concentration.

There is a broader body of organisational thought that reinforces this point. Scholars such as Henry Mintzberg have long observed that the real work of management lies not in planning alone, but in how decision flows are structured within organisations. Structure gently shapes behaviour.

The question isn’t whether leaders are working hard enough, or whether they care enough about building their teams. Most are working harder than they should need to, and most care deeply about developing capability around them.

The question is whether the design itself – the way decisions flow, the way authority is distributed, the way risk is carried – has kept pace with the organisation’s growth.

Seen in that light, the recurring list is not a sign of failure. It is a signal.

 

The Continuum of Gradual Weight

None of this typically presents as crisis.

It’s something less dramatic but more persistent. Centralised decisions remain central. Structural priorities remain structural. The list remains active. Relief remains partial.

Writing in the Harvard Business Review suggests that as companies scale, decision rights often lag behind operational growth, creating unintended bottlenecks at senior levels. The structure doesn’t collapse. It just becomes heavier than it needs to be.

Over time, energy erodes more than performance. Revenue grows. Teams expand. Systems improve. But progress feels more difficult than it should at this stage of maturity.

This is not dramatic decline. It is slow accumulation.

The weight of final judgement does not reduce. It compresses time. It tightens the diary. It keeps the leader close to issues that, at scale, might reasonably sit elsewhere.

In the earlier reflection on leadership pressure from growth, the theme of accumulation was introduced at a broader level. Here it appears in everyday behaviour. In the rewriting of a priority list that improves in appearance but leaves ownership largely unchanged.

The continuum is subtle:

• Centralised decision-making leads to persistent owner dependency.
• Persistent dependency leads to recurring priorities.
• Recurring priorities lead to continued reprioritising.
• Reprioritising maintains centrality.

Nothing dramatic happens. The pattern simply repeats.

 

What Prioritisation Cannot Change

Prioritisation is necessary. Without it, focus fragments. Effort becomes diffuse.

It works well for execution, for task sequencing. But at leadership level, most items on the list aren’t tasks waiting to be done. They’re decisions waiting to be made, or problems waiting for structural change.

Prioritising cannot, by itself, move decisions beyond the leader’s orbit. It cannot redesign authority or resolve persistent organisational habits. It cannot alter the fundamental question of who carries what.

Return to the image of the rewritten list. The items are familiar. The order is logical. The intent is clear.

Yet the question becomes less about whether the list is accurate, and more about whether the underlying ownership has shifted.

 

Sitting With the Orbit

If the same issues remain near the top month after month, what are they signalling?

Is the question one of sequence – what should I do first? Or is it something deeper, more structural – why does this keep returning to my desk?

Better ordering may not produce lighter leadership. Some forms of relief come not from refining the list, but from recognising what the list leaves untouched.

The priority list will always have a role. It will always be useful. But when it becomes the primary tool for managing leadership pressure, it may be signalling something more structural.

Which items on your list return not because they are difficult, but because they have never truly left your desk?

 

 

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