01. Most Organisations Do Not Collapse

Tuesday, 06 January 2026

I first walked through the gates of Hollins Paper Mill in the mid 1990s.

Like many industrial institutions, it seemed permanent. The mill had stood for generations. Families had worked there for decades. Paper produced in Lancashire travelled across the world. To a young student of Paper Science with Management, it felt less like a business and more like part of the landscape. Some organisations are so familiar that we assume they will always be there.

After university and time elsewhere in the industry, I returned in 2003 as Shift Operations Manager. It was there, on the shop floor rather than in the classroom, that my leadership education truly began. Shift handovers. Production targets. Difficult conversations. The daily balancing act between people, performance and standards. An MBA would follow in 2005, but many of the most important lessons had already begun.

I left the mill in 2008.

Within five years, it had closed.

Its closure was not sudden. There was no single dramatic event. No announcement that the end had arrived. No catastrophic moment that changed everything overnight. Instead, like so many organisations before it, the decline had taken place gradually, almost imperceptibly, over many years.

Most organisations do not collapse.

They drift.

When people talk about organisational failure, they tend to imagine dramatic events. A scandal. A product recall. A financial crisis. A public resignation. Something happened, and the organisation fell apart. The event becomes the explanation.

It is a satisfying story because it suggests that failure arrives suddenly. That there was a moment before the problem and a moment after it. That if only different decisions had been made, catastrophe might have been avoided.

The reality is less dramatic and far more dangerous.

Most organisations do not fail because of a single event. By the time the event arrives, the decline is usually well advanced. The scandal, the accident or the crisis is often the consequence, not the cause.

The cause is drift.

Drift rarely attracts attention because it rarely announces itself. It appears in small compromises and seemingly reasonable decisions. A deadline slips. A process is bypassed. A difficult conversation is postponed. A quality issue is accepted. A standard is relaxed because circumstances are difficult and there are more urgent matters demanding attention.

Each decision makes sense in isolation.

That is what makes drift so difficult to recognise.

Nobody arrives at work intending to lower the standard. Nobody gathers the leadership team and proposes a plan for mediocrity. The change happens gradually. Expectations adjust. Exceptions become normal. Temporary arrangements become permanent. Workarounds become process.

People adapt.

The organisation adapts.

The standard changes.

The danger is that drift is often mistaken for stability. The organisation is still operating. Customers are still buying. Meetings are still taking place. Reports are still being written. Production is still moving. Activity creates the appearance of progress.

For a time, everything appears fine.

Then the gap begins to emerge.

The organisation is no longer what it once was. More importantly, it is no longer what it could have been.

This is why organisational decline can be difficult to identify from the inside. The changes are rarely large enough to provoke alarm. They occur one compromise at a time. The people making those decisions are often competent, well-intentioned and hardworking. They are responding to pressures, constraints and competing priorities.

The problem is not bad people.

The problem is accumulated compromise.

Over time, organisations become exactly what they tolerate.

A meeting that starts late is tolerated.

A quality issue is tolerated.

A missed deadline is tolerated.

An unclear expectation is tolerated.

Poor performance is tolerated.

Eventually, the tolerance becomes the culture.

At that point, leaders often begin searching for answers. Why has performance declined? Why has accountability weakened? Why does progress feel harder than it once did?

The temptation is to look for a single cause.

Usually there isn't one.

There are hundreds.

The organisation has drifted from its original standard, and because the movement was gradual, nobody noticed how far it had travelled.

This is why leadership matters.

Leadership is not primarily about vision, charisma or authority. Those things may be useful, but they are not the essence of the role.

Leadership exists to resist drift.

It exists to maintain standards when compromise would be easier. To make expectations explicit when ambiguity would be more comfortable. To address problems while they are still small. To notice what others have stopped seeing.

Most organisations do not need rescuing from catastrophe.

They need rescuing from gradual decline.

The challenge is that drift never feels urgent. There is always a more immediate problem demanding attention. A customer issue. A budget pressure. A project deadline. A staffing shortage.

Meanwhile the standard slips another fraction.

Then another.

Then another.

Until one day the organisation finds itself accepting things it would once have rejected without hesitation.

That is how mediocrity takes hold.

Not through a single decision.

Through the absence of many small decisions.

Most organisations do not collapse.

They compromise.

Standards slip.

Ambiguity spreads.

Mediocrity takes over.

We draw the line.

The responsibility of leadership is to recognise the drift before it becomes the destination.

That is the work.

That is the challenge.

That is why leadership sets the standard.