How work actually happens matters
Observation from the field
Organizations spend a lot of time defining how work should happen.
Structures are designed.
Roles are clarified.
Processes are documented.
Responsibilities are assigned.
Those things matter. A lot. They create clarity and help people coordinate.
But then the work begins.
A process that looked simple becomes complicated.
A decision pathway works differently than expected.
Teams find different ways to collaborate.
People create new ways to get things done.
Sometimes this gets seen as people not following the process.
But often, something else is happening.
The organization is showing how work actually happens.
What’s usually happening underneath
Formal structures tell one part of the story.
They show how work was intended to flow.
But organizations are living systems made up of relationships, decisions, constraints, and everyday interactions.
People continuously adapt. It is how humans navigate complexity.
They create connections.
They share information.
They find shortcuts.
They develop informal ways of working.
Not because they are trying to avoid the system.
Because they are trying to make the system work.
Those informal patterns can reveal important information.
They can show where processes are unclear, where decisions slow down, where collaboration happens, and where people are carrying gaps the formal system does not address.
Why this matters
When organizations only look at the formal system, they can miss what is actually allowing work to happen.
A process redesign may remove an informal connection that helped teams coordinate.
A structure change may disrupt relationships that supported decision-making.
A new tool may overlook the ways people actually share information.
The risk is not just that the solution does not work.
It is that the organization accidentally removes something that was helping it function.
The informal system is not automatically a problem to fix.
It is information to understand.
What changes when you see it differently
The goal is not to choose between formal structure and informal reality.
Organizations need both.
Instead of asking only:
“Why aren’t people following the process?”
Organizations can also ask:
“What does the way work actually happens tell us?”
That shift creates better decisions.
Because effective structures are not designed around how we imagine work happens.
They are shaped by understanding how it happens.
Questions to consider
Where does the way work happens differ from how it was designed?
What are those differences helping people accomplish?
What could you learn from those patterns before changing them?
Invitation
Before changing how work should happen, spend time understanding how it does happen.
The ways people navigate work every day may already be showing you what the organization needs.
