Where structure became visible

The sectors changed. The countries changed. The cultures changed. The scale changed.

The patterns did not.

I kept finding them in organisations under load.

International expansion across different markets and business cultures. Mergers and their integration. Touring productions moving between casts, countries and languages. Founder businesses outgrowing their founders. Companies preparing to enter the public markets. Leadership teams trying to stay coherent as complexity rose around them.

The same things kept appearing. A decision, clear in the room, running in three versions a fortnight later. Work that held inside a team and broke at the handoff. One person carrying what the structure was meant to share. A new leader, and the old pattern returning within a year.

For a long time I read each as local. The industry was always there to explain it, and the industry was always different, so the explanation always seemed to hold.

Every move was a reason to expect a different explanation.

It never came.

Eventually the similarities were harder to explain than the differences.