My neighbor gets an absurd amount of produce from a small garden plot. Lettuce, cauliflower, greens, herbs. It’s the kind of harvest that makes me rethink what’s possible in my plot. His secret? He tests his soil every spring and fertilizes based on its needs.
Me? I plant, water, weed, and hope. Things grow, but not like in his garden.
We’re both putting in the same amount of effort, but I’m guessing at what my garden needs. My neighbor isn’t guessing. He knows his soil’s pH, its nutrient profile, and what it’s missing. His investment is targeted. Mine is hopeful.
The same dynamic plays out in organizations every day. Leaders invest in their people, and they should. But without understanding the organizational environment those people work in, the investment is a guess. It’s like adding nitrogen when phosphorus is what’s needed.
A critical step during system design is analyzing the current environment and behaviors. This isn’t just documenting the current state of things. It is understanding how complex systems came about, what causes friction, and where there are opportunities.
What might seem like a simple assessment can unveil impactful insights.
A few years ago, we were designing a new system for a client’s annual publication process. They were adamant that the system must support color-coded sections that align with their editing workflow.
We probed, asked why, and worked to understand the underlying requirement.
It turned out the color-coding was due to a previous system that required chapters to be entered in a specific order. Over the years, it had been baked into the organization’s processes, and no one questioned it. Even though the current systems didn’t require the same structure, the color-coding had persisted.
Here’s what made it interesting. Once the client understood that, and the assumption was removed, there was a cascading impact. They realized the entire editing process could change, not just the color-coding. It opened up previously unavailable opportunities for innovation in the system we were designing. One line of questioning energized them to rethink everything.
This pattern also appears at the individual level. I’ve seen project managers who review every closed ticket because they say, “I’m responsible for quality.” Yet when I dug in, I found that quality was measured at the feature level, not the ticket level. The QA lead could take responsibility for feature quality and report on it to the PM. The PM focused on project management, which led to increased productivity and higher-quality deliverables.
In both cases, the constraint wasn’t a constraint. It was an inherited behavior that looked like a requirement until someone from outside the system questioned it.
In aviation, there’s a term called normalization of deviance. A crew deviates slightly from standard procedure, nothing bad happens, and the deviation becomes accepted practice. Over time, what was once a violation becomes normal. Risk accumulates invisibly until something breaks.
Organizations don’t just normalize the deviation. They build systems around it, and those systems persist long after anyone remembers why. Workarounds become standard practice, shortcuts become well-worn paths, and nobody questions them. Someone new starts, and it becomes the way they’ve always done things.
You have managers who are working hard and plateauing. Your processes feel sluggish, but no one can pinpoint why. You’ve considered a leadership development program, or you’ve thought about upgrading your business systems. Both may be needed, but the question is: how do you know where that investment will have the most impact?
Without understanding the organizational soil, you’re picking from a menu and hoping something works. That’s not an investment strategy. That’s a lottery ticket.
This is why I start every engagement with an organizational assessment. Not to find what’s broken, but to find what’s invisible. The inherited systems, the unquestioned processes, the assumptions that look like requirements. Once those are visible, you can direct your investment where it will compound, not where it will be absorbed by constraints nobody examined.
My neighbor’s garden doesn’t produce more because he works harder. It produces more because he understands what he’s working with before he invests. The soil test has value on its own. He sees his land differently after he gets the results. But when he acts on what it reveals, that’s when the garden produces.
The same is true for organizations. Understand the soil first. Then invest.