Why Effort Keeps Failing—and What Leaders Misdiagnose Instead

Effort didn’t fail. The system did.

Most performance breakdowns are treated as motivation problems. Leaders respond with urgency and encouragement, then push harder when results don’t follow.

What they rarely question is the structure those efforts move through.

When people work hard and outcomes remain inconsistent, the issue isn’t engagement.
It’s design.

Systems produce the results they are built to produce—again and again.