SJ Greaves

For most of my working life I have asked the same question of organisations. Is this real? It is a structural question, not a moral one. I am not asking whether the people involved are sincere. I am asking whether the strategy corresponds to how decisions actually get made, whether the values statement holds under pressure, whether the behaviour described in the leadership policy bears any resemblance to what happens on the floor.

In the last article I wrote that change in 2026 is no longer something organisations do, it is the condition they operate inside. The piece described the shift, named what the workforce is now seeing, and made the case that the old playbook cannot meet the people it was designed for.

When an organisation is struggling, the instinct is to look at the people inside it. Are they communicating well enough? Are they resilient enough? Do they have the right skills? But most of what looks like a people problem is actually a structural problem.