Organisational Transformation: It’s Complicated

Most organizations eventually require radical transformation. They drift into and through forms of neurosis, clinging to outdated responses while the environment around them changes. A gap opens between what was, what is, and what is becoming, and it is within this gap that organizational structures harden into habits that no longer serve their purpose.

In practice, efficiency is undermined not by a lack of systems, but by the proliferation of systems that serve only themselves. Universities provide a clear example. Much of the activity revolves around celebrating and sustaining those who run the machinery rather than the mission itself. Over time, the administrative class acquires disproportionate power, shaping outcomes not by the force of ideas or discovery but by their position in the hierarchy. The institution becomes more efficient at perpetuating its own routines than at producing knowledge.

The non-linearity of complex systems ensures that this redundancy is not incidental. It is the product. Organizations generate excess process, duplicated effort, and layers of oversight that loop back upon themselves. What looks like waste is in fact the main output: redundancy as continuity. This is rarely acknowledged because language is used to disguise it. Terms like “efficiency,” “support,” or “coordination” conceal the truth that much of what is being optimized is simply the maintenance of optimization itself.

To approach genuine optimization requires honesty about these patterns. One must distinguish between functions that connect directly to purpose and those that exist only to sustain internal loops. This does not mean stripping an organization bare—some redundancy is necessary for resilience—but it does mean recognizing when redundancy becomes the dominant logic. True optimization emerges not from more processes, but from clarity: aligning flows of attention, energy, and authority with outcomes rather than with the preservation of (ie redundant) structure.