As of late I have been having innumerable conversations with leaders and organizations about things being stuck, stalled out, reaching a critical point. Do you feel this way too?

This can show up in many ways for us as leaders and in organizations:

“My senior leadership team has numerous initiatives to accomplish and each one has reached a blockade. We don’t feel like any one of them is moving forward and we are spinning our wheels.”

“Our operational areas are experiencing immense staff turnover. Just as we get someone in and trained up, someone else leaves. Staff are tired and burned out. We don’t see any end in sight, just constant churn.”

“I am stuck. I am not sure I am making a difference. Certainly not the difference I want to make. I need to make.”

“Our leadership team is so dysfunctional. We talk about the same things over and over again. And not the big important things. We will never accomplish our individual and collective goals until we can break through this.”

“As a Board we are down in the weeds. We know we shouldn’t, but we don’t seem to know how to pull ourselves out of the details. Can you help us?”

“We know we don’t have the ‘right people in the right seats on the bus’ and it is affecting the quality of our work. Co-workers feel stressed by picking up the slack of others. We don’t have the luxury of time to coach and develop the people just filling seats. How do we make progress with the folks we have or do we have to accept the status quo? When do we decide enough is enough?”

“I am seeking to be a better leader. I have identified where I want to improve. But I am stuck!”

“Literally, the pipe into [or out] of our facility is almost at the breaking point. It can’t handle any additional capacity. It is affecting our core work. We know it is fragile and yet we can’t slow down the work we do. Should we just keep taking our chances or are there solutions we haven’t even considered?” {Think about it…does it make a notable difference if it is the water pipe versus the sewer pipe versus the information flow? Probably does!}

“I feel that the inner team is not working well together. The tension is sharp. We are constantly in a log jam. Can’t move forward and can’t move back. Can you guide us to find a way forward?”

“The relationship between our Board and senior leadership is shaky. Some of this is inherited from the prior CEO-Board relations, but we can’t keep harkening back to yesterday. How do we move forward?”

“The behaviors on our leadership team have to change. Probably for each individual, but most certainly for us as a whole. But yet, we are each “senior leaders” and we have been “successful” in the past, so do I really need to change? I am not the problem. If only they…”

“When I tell my folks to do something, they don’t just do it. It is so frustrating. I know how it needs to be done. I used to be an XYZ. Why don’t people just follow the new policy & procedure I just emailed out on this last week.”

“We have numerous important goals and plans for the year. I don’t even know where to start. And so, I don’t. I keep waiting for it to become clearer.”

“I don’t have time for everything on my plate. I stay late. I come in early. I work on weekends. I am buried. I can’t imagine getting out from under this.”

Does one or more of these blocks echo the voice in your head?

Where are things stuck?

   What is causing the blockage?

While each situation is unique. It is wise to first identify and “name” the block.

• Is it a leadership mindset blockage?
• Interpersonal conflict? Or (common) team dysfunction?
• Is there lack of clarity or understanding on where we are headed? Or lack of a prioritization approach?
• Is our customer asking for something that we are not equipped to deliver?
• Do we have conflicting facts about the situation?
• Is there a mismatch between the people and the work processes?
• Is it lack of knowledge, skill, ability, or desire (to change)?
• Are we unclear on roles? (e.g. governance versus management)

When looking at an organization, I often examine it from a whole system perspective. The Baldrige framework for Organizational Excellence is one way to look at how an organization runs as a whole. Depicted here, it looks at how all of the moving parts work together as a whole to create results: