In some organizations, when things go wrong, the answer is almost always the same.

It’s them.

I’ve walked into this more than a few times. One situation stood out. Experienced people. High-visibility work. Nowhere to hide if things went wrong. Leadership had already done the math — capable, seasoned professionals simply weren’t cutting it. Nor had the team before them. Stay with me.

A convenient assessment. Also wrong.

Turns out the environment was broken. And that was breaking those pesky teams that weren’t performing.

Bring bad news to a meeting and you might as well walk thirteen steps to the conference room.

Leadership lived in the same environment. Apparently “the beatings will continue until morale improves” started higher up the org chart.

So people adapted. Schedules became optimistic. Status reports became Hallmark cards. Concerns went underground to be dealt with later.

The blame rolled downhill. It usually does. That affects morale. Morale affects productivity. Most organizations would rather not connect those two dots.

Looking away is easier than looking in the mirror, but it’s the long road to success.

No pearls of wisdom here. Just a pattern worth noticing.