A Small Intervention, A Big Shift

Sometimes transformation doesn't require a complete overhaul. Sometimes it's about making one thing visible that was always there.

A practice came to me frustrated with their project delivery culture. Deadlines slipping, communication breaking down, team morale low. They expected I'd redesign their entire workflow.

Instead, I asked them to map how decisions actually got made. Not how they *should* get made according to the org chart, but how they *actually* got made in practice.

What emerged was fascinating. Decisions were made in three distinct ways depending on who initiated them. Partners had one pathway, project leads another, delivery teams a third. None of these were explicit. Everyone just "knew" how it worked—except they all knew slightly different versions.

The intervention wasn't complicated. We made the decision-making pathways visible. We named them. We agreed which pathway applied to which decisions. We created clarity where assumption had been.

Within a month, project delivery improved noticeably. Not because people worked harder, but because they stopped working around invisible obstacles.

This is what cultural transformation looks like in practice. Not grand redesigns, but intentional clarity about how you already work—then the choice to work differently.