Loose Isn't Nimble

A client called me a while back, worn out. He kept losing good people, and he was sure the people were the problem.

I've heard some version of this more times than I can count.

You're paying a full team and still staring at half finished work everywhere. Projects that stall. Stuff that only moves when you touch it. From your seat, it looks like nobody is stepping up.

Here's what's actually going on.

The plan is in your head. All of it. You expect people to see what you see and just run with it. But they're not you. You never spelled it out, so the big things sit and wait for you.

The flinch

Then someone says the word "structure" and you flinch. I've watched it happen in real time.

It feels like red tape. Like the corporate nonsense you started this business to get away from. The thing that slows you down, boxes you in, and turns your scrappy company into a place where people fill out forms instead of doing work. So you keep it loose and tell yourself that's the nimble way to run.

It's not. Loose means nobody really owns anything. There's no bar to hit, so people fall short of a standard you never actually set. Then you're frustrated when they miss it, and they're frustrated because they can't figure out what winning looks like, and eventually the good ones stop trying to guess and go somewhere that tells them.

You can't hold people to a standard that only lives in your head.

What structure actually is

Strip the word of its baggage and structure is three things.

Real roles, so people know what's theirs without asking. Clear outcomes, so they know what finished looks like without a check-in meeting. And a way for work to move from one person to the next and actually get done, so it doesn't route back through you every time somebody finishes a step.

That's it. Not a bureaucracy. One page per process, if that.

Notice what none of that does: none of it slows you down. Every piece of it removes a wait. The waits were you. The approval that sat in your inbox. The question only you could answer. The job that stalled because two people each thought the other one had it.

You think structure will box you in. It's actually the one thing that finally lets you step back.

The tell

Here's how you know this is your problem and not a hiring problem.

The same issue keeps showing up with different people in the seat. You've replaced the role twice and the work still stalls in the same place. At some point the common variable isn't the people.

When the same problem keeps showing up with different faces, it stopped being about the faces a while ago.

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How many good people do you have to lose before it stops being about the people?