Nobody drives to work hoping to fail.
Nobody walks into a meeting planning to waste everyone's time. Nobody signs up for a project intending to miss the deadline. Nobody joins a company planning to be the person who doesn't pull their weight.
And yet.
The post-mortem always finds the same things. Poor communication. Misaligned expectations. People who weren't equipped to do what they were asked to do. A system that assumed capability that wasn't there.
We spend enormous energy diagnosing the wreckage and almost no energy asking the question that would have prevented it.
If nobody drove to work hoping to fail — what happened between the parking lot and the outcome?
The answer is almost never the people. It is almost always the conditions.
People do not fail because they want to. They fail because the organization put them in a position where failure was the most likely outcome — and then expressed surprise when it arrived.
The most expensive assumption in any organization is that the conditions for success exist simply because the intention to succeed does.
They don't. The conditions have to be built. Before the system goes live. Before the initiative launches. Before the hire is made.
That is the work most organizations skip. It is also the work that decides everything.
Dominic Luzi · Chief Answer Grape, Management Alchemy
