There’s a dynamic inside most organisations that is expensive and drives rework, delay, and frustration.

Most leaders see the symptoms. Very few see what’s actually causing it.

We were working with a tech company where this had taken hold. It wasn’t raised by the VPs who brought us in. We noticed it in how their directors spoke.

They spoke with a kind of resignation about what they were experiencing — not as a single issue you could isolate and fix, but as a pattern that kept showing up across the work they were responsible for.

These directors and teams sat within one VP’s organisation, but were deeply involved in workstreams owned by another. They were accountable for delivery, but not always part of the decisions that shaped how that work was designed.

Over time, the same things kept happening. Work would move forward and then be pulled back. Decisions that had felt settled would reopen. Direction changed at the last minute. Ideas that might have improved the work weren’t really heard.

In practice, this shows up as rework, delayed decisions, missed opportunities, and teams delivering less than they’re capable of.

They could see what the work could be and it kept falling short. We could hear their frustration.

But alongside that came something more serious: a growing sense that they weren’t being backed in the moments that mattered, which was impacting how they saw the leadership above them.

It had started to erode trust in their VP.

One asked, almost bewildered, “Why isn’t my VP grabbing hold of this?”

What they were pointing to is a problem we see in almost every organisation. It’s expensive, often misdiagnosed, and when it is misdiagnosed, it tends to stay in the system far longer than it should.

From where they were sitting, it looked like a failure of leadership.

But when we spent time with the VPs, something else became visible.

The Distinction that helps us here is Competing Contexts.

And once you see it, you start to realise how much of what gets accepted as inevitable in organisations is actually this.

Each of those VPs was making decisions that made complete sense in the world they were responsible for. One was focused on speed and delivery and getting product into market and capturing value. The other was focused on quality and ensuring what was built would hold and not create downstream issues.

Both were doing their job.

But the system, as a result, was producing something that fell short.

You can have capable, committed leaders in your team, all acting rationally, and still get an outcome that doesn’t work.

Not because people are unprofessional. But because they are operating from different contexts that have never been made visible.

The most effective way to reveal those contexts is through another of our distinctions, what we call Background Commitments.

(I'll write about Background Commitments in a future article)

Not the commitments written down, but the ones people actually feel responsible for.

“I can’t miss the quarter.”

“I can’t let this fail.”

“I can’t compromise long-term quality.”

“I need this to land in my market.”

“I can’t be the one that slows this down.”

“I’m accountable if this goes wrong.”

“I need this to be scalable.”

“I can’t afford rework later.”

Individually, each of these makes sense. But together, they pull the system in different directions. These commitments are rarely spoken directly, but they shape what feels like the right decision.

So what appears, on the surface, as disagreement is often something else entirely: background commitments that have never been made visible to each other.

Most organisations try to solve these situations downstream, through tighter processes, more escalation, clearer ownership, or more alignment meetings. Or they just live with it as 'just the way it is around here.'

But if the competing contexts underneath the work remain hidden, the friction simply reappears elsewhere in the system.

What changes things is leadership teams taking the time to surface what each part of the organisation is actually trying to make work and then creating a shared commitment strong enough that people no longer need to protect their local priorities in isolation.

That is not a superficial conversation. Sometimes it takes an hour or two as a leadership team to really work through it.

Crucially, it can't be some cosmetic exercise of polite agreement. It has to be a real commitment exciting enough to capture ambition and shift background commitments.

But once it happens, the downstream effect can be enormous.

Trade-offs become clearer. Decisions stop getting reopened. Rework reduces. Teams move faster because the organisation is no longer pulling against itself underneath the surface.

And that is the part many organisations miss: the time spent having the right conversation upstream often saves months of cost, delay, and frustration downstream.

Because once competing contexts become visible, leadership teams can finally make real decisions together instead of unconsciously defending hidden commitments.

Over time, this becomes a capability inside the organisation. Not something solved once, but something leaders can see and work with repeatedly. That is when organisations begin to move differently.

So consider this:

Where in your organisation is something obvious not being addressed, not because people are unwilling, but because the context and background commitments haven’t yet been made visible?

If you can see it, you’re already closer than most.