You Don’t Have a Motivation Problem. You Have a Design Problem

If your organization relies on a handful of dedicated people to keep things running, it’s a signal to take a closer look at the system itself. Often, hard work covers up unclear roles, decision-making authority, and processes that need improvement. When leaders reward individual heroics rather than addressing the underlying structure, risk quietly increases behind the scenes.

​Take notice of where work depends on individuals rather than clear processes. Gather and share essential knowledge. Make it obvious who is responsible for each decision. Strengthen the daily flow of work. When your structure supports the work, people’s commitment can drive progress rather than just hold things together.

When Effort Becomes the Operating Model

If you lead people, you notice effort. You see the late nights, the constant reshuffling of priorities, the same people stepping in when work starts to wobble. After a while, that level of effort feels normal. It quietly becomes part of how things get done. The most committed people keep raising their hands because they care about the work and they want it to succeed. 

But when an organization depends on individual effort to keep work moving, it usually covers for something else. Unclear processes. Blurry roles. Missing structure. The system stops carrying its share of the load, so people pick it up instead. 

Why Effort Often Looks Like Effectiveness

Now, effort masquerades as effectiveness. Work keeps moving. Deadlines get met. Problems get solved. From the outside, it can look fine. What’s easy to miss is what’s happening underneath, how work actually flows, who really makes decisions, where accountability sits, and where information slows down or stops altogether. 

​When people succeed in spite of the system, they carry weight the organization should handle. That kind of effort does not sustain and puts the burden on the wrong people. Leadership teams are responsible for building systems that support the work people do. 

How Workarounds Turn Into Risk

​You start to see the same patterns take root. Temporary workarounds turn into standard practice. Decisions happen in sidebar conversations. The same high performers jump into every issue because they adapt fast, and people trust them. Knowledge stays with individuals, not necessarily because they hoard it, but no forum exists to share. 

​Over time, the system relies solely on constant personal intervention. Your people’s energy goes toward holding things together. Meanwhile, no one has the capacity to improve the system. 

​That’s where the risk grows. When knowledge and decision-making reside with a single person or a small group, the organization weakens. If someone leaves, gets promoted, or takes time off, work slows. 

​The scramble makes sense. The knowledge never got documented. The work never became a system. One exit shows how much the organization depended on a single person.

Why Change Feels Harder Than It Should

​This also explains why change feels hard. People don’t resist because they don’t care. They hesitate because the system already runs at its limit. What leaders call resistance often shows up as fatigue or uncertainty.

Intent matters, but it does not fix broken structure. Leaders can care about their people and still support systems that burn them out. Good intentions cannot replace good design.

Leadership Is A Design Choice

​So instead of asking for more effort or pushing people to work harder, look honestly at the system. Watch how work moves. Clarify roles. Decide who owns decisions. Create shared ways to capture and pass on knowledge. Ask whether a new hire could understand how work actually gets done, or whether everything depends on what people carry in their heads. 

​Those questions point to design, not motivation. Leadership means seeing how the organization really operates, not how you hoped it would. Commitment didn’t create this problem, and commitment alone won’t solve it. 

​Build a system that works without burning people out. That’s leadership. It starts when leaders stop relying on rewarding extra effort and start fixing the structure behind the work.

Now what?

This is the leadership ROI moment. Slow down, reflect on what’s actually happening, observe the pattern underneath it, then implement one change that fixes the constraint.

What should I look at first?

Who is the person(s) you count on to keep things moving? Think about the last time they stepped in to prevent a delay or unblock work. Get clear on what they actually did, not just that they “helped.”

What changes if I do nothing?

What would slow down or stop if that person were out for two weeks (unexpectedly)? The answer shows you where the system relies on a person rather than a process.

What’s one practical next step?

Fix the specific gap their effort covered. Make the information available, clarify who decides, or tighten the process that keeps breaking. Don’t fix everything, just fix that one spot.