We talk a lot about the best ways to work, but we don’t talk very much about how to move our organisations toward them.

As a former consultant, I grappled with this every day. Even with a clear idea of some alternative way of working, a large team of people ready to teach it and good executive support, it is still very difficult. One reason for this is that we hastily squander a powerful resource – pressure. 

When a problem impacts our business, organisational pressure is created. We all want to relieve that pressure and that shared desire is a special thing – we can harness it to effect positive change. Unfortunately, many organisations react reflexively and take the path of least resistance. That is how pressure differences work, after all. We look for quick fixes like overworking “temporarily” or juggling more WIP. But quick fixes are not always good fixes.

What if we are only moving the impact somewhere less obvious? E.g. we have started a critical piece of work to placate stakeholders, but the resulting increase in WIP is causing inefficiencies across all work? What if we are only changing the timescale of the impact so that instead of being hurt a little every day, we get hurt a lot all at once? E.g. we are overworking somebody and it will blow up in our face when they quit.

Our quick fixes may actually leave us in a worse place than before. The root problem is still not solved and there is little pressure left to drive improvement. We wasted our chance. 

It’s important that we not reflexively relieve pressure. Pressure helps us grow and change if we channel it wisely. We may need to use some of that pressure to make the immediate impacts of our problems manageable, but to build a great and enduring business we must direct as much of that pressure as we can into lasting solutions to our deepest problems. So spend your pressure wisely and don’t rush relieve it entirely. To improve continuously we need pressure and with no pressure, we can easily get stuck.

If you want a fleshed-out example, you can read my article about adopting trunk-based development. It’s an approach that offers some benefit at each stage, while still leaving or creating enough pressure to drive us toward the next one.