The Illusion of Action: Why Your Organisation is Probably Solving the Wrong Problem (And How to Stop
When everyone's busy but nothing's really changing - a survival guide for the perpetually frustrated leader
Right, let's talk about something that's driving leaders to distraction across Britain and beyond: the maddening sensation that despite everyone working harder than ever, actual progress feels about as elusive as a reliable train service in winter.
You know the feeling. Your team's in more meetings than a cabinet reshuffle, there are initiatives launching with impressive frequency, and everyone's "delivering outcomes" with such enthusiasm you'd think productivity was an Olympic sport. Yet somehow, six months later, you're staring at the same fundamental problems like they're a persistent stain on your favourite shirt.
Welcome to what I call The Illusion of Action - that peculiar organisational phenomenon where we mistake being tremendously busy for being tremendously effective.
The £366 Billion Question
Here's a fact that should give you pause: organisations globally spend over £366 billion annually on leadership development, change programmes, and various initiatives. That's enough money to fund the NHS for several months. And yet, research consistently shows that 70-90% of these efforts fail to deliver meaningful long-term impact.
That's not just disappointing - that's the organisational equivalent of spending a fortune on a state-of-the-art kitchen only to keep burning toast.
The problem isn't that people don't care, or that they lack capability. The problem is that most organisations are solving the wrong problem in the first place. It's like trying to fix your internet connection by rearranging the living room - lots of activity, minimal improvement to your ability to actually get things done.
A Familiar Corporate Drama
Picture this scenario, which plays out in organisations across the country with depressing regularity:
Act I: Management announces a new strategic initiative with considerable fanfare.
Act II: Teams mobilise efficiently. Workshops multiply. PowerPoints proliferate faster than speculation about the weather.
Act III: Initial enthusiasm! People adopt new terminology in meetings. Someone updates their email signature with a motivational quote.
Act IV: Slowly, imperceptibly, like watching paint dry in real time, momentum begins to wane.
Act V: Six months later, everyone's back to doing roughly what they were doing before, but now with slightly more cynicism and a drawer full of branded notebooks.
Most people diagnose this as an implementation problem - poor communication, insufficient resources, resistance to change. But often, the real issue is more fundamental: you were never solving the right problem to begin with.
The Art of Strategic Pause
Before you think I'm advocating for endless deliberation that makes parliamentary procedure look swift, let me be clear: I'm not suggesting you spend months in contemplation.
What I am suggesting is something almost revolutionary in our action-obsessed culture: pausing long enough to ask whether you're solving the right problem.
This isn't delay - it's direction. It's the difference between rushing to catch the wrong train and taking thirty seconds to check you're on the right platform.
At Innovators Within, we help leadership teams align on the right priorities (typically in 2-4 weeks, which is faster than most organisations take to approve a new supplier). The process involves asking some deceptively simple questions:
Are we solving the right problem?
What assumptions are we not questioning?
Who actually understands this situation best?
What would happen if we reframed this entirely?
These aren't philosophical questions you'd explore at a team retreat. They're diagnostic tools that often reveal fundamental misalignments that make organisations move with all the coordination of a poorly rehearsed flash mob.
When Good Teams Go Sideways
A story illustrates this beautifully. We worked with a pharmaceutical division that had become about as motivated as a civil servant on a Friday afternoon. Years of restructuring and cost-cutting had left the team feeling like they'd been demoted from innovative scientists to glorified administrators.
Rather than launching another ‘culture change programme,’ we asked a different question: What if you weren't just compliance gatekeepers, but entrepreneurial catalysts for innovation?
This wasn't corporate wordplay - it was a fundamental reframe of their identity and value proposition. Instead of seeing themselves as the people who said "no" to interesting ideas, they began to see themselves as the people who figured out how to say ‘yes’ safely.
The change was remarkable - not because we'd given them new skills or processes, but because we'd helped them see their role differently. They went from being a cost centre everyone tolerated to a value creator everyone wanted to work with.
The British Art of Avoiding Difficult Conversations
Not every story has a happy ending. We've also worked with organisations that had all the insight they needed but lacked the resolve to act on it.
Take a European tech company that was scaling faster than their decision-making processes could handle. When we revealed some uncomfortable truths about founder-driven bottlenecks and the tension between startup reflexes and scale-up requirements, the leadership team's response was essentially the organisational equivalent of saying ‘mustn't grumble’ and carrying on exactly as before.
Six months later, their Series C funding arrived with terms so harsh they made a bank overdraft look generous. The cost of avoiding difficult conversations had become measurable in diluted equity and reduced control.
The Return on Better Thinking
You might be wondering about the ROI of all this strategic reflection. Fair question - we don't part with resources easily, and rightly so.
The truth is, the return on better thinking isn't always linear or immediately measurable. But it's tangible in ways that matter:
It saves money by helping you avoid costly detours. When you understand the real issue, you stop throwing resources at symptoms.
It saves time by aligning everyone on what actually needs fixing. No more six-month initiatives that solve problems nobody actually has.
It builds coherence by creating the sort of direction that makes people feel like they're part of something meaningful rather than just surviving until the next reorganisation.
A Call to Strategic Sanity
So here's my challenge: Next time someone suggests launching into action mode with considerable urgency, try asking this question: "What's the real problem we're solving - and who decided that?"
You might discover that what looks like resistance is actually misalignment. That what feels like laziness is actually confusion. That what appears to be a skills problem is actually a direction problem.
Because in a world where everyone's moving fast but few are moving in the same direction, the competitive advantage might just belong to those who pause long enough to make sure they're heading somewhere worth going.
And if that's not worth a proper cup of tea and a thoughtful conversation, I don't know what is.
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We help leadership teams get direction before they get busy. If you're tired of solving the wrong problems efficiently, you know where to find us.