Ask people inside almost any organisation what slows their work down, and a clear pattern tends to emerge: alongside genuine external pressures \u2014 market conditions, competition, resource constraints \u2014 a significant share of the friction they name is internal. A process that takes three approvals when one would do. A decision that sits unresolved because nobody’s clearly responsible for making it. A tool or system everyone has quietly learned to work around rather than fix.<\/p>\n
This distinction matters enormously, because external obstacles and internal ones call for very different responses. External conditions can be navigated, adapted to, or planned around, but they can’t simply be removed. Internal obstacles, by contrast, are largely within an organisation’s own control \u2014 which makes them both more frustrating to leave unaddressed and considerably more addressable once someone actually decides to.<\/p>\n
Self-created barriers have a peculiar quality: the people most affected by them are often the ones least likely to question them, simply because they’ve never known anything different. A cumbersome approval process becomes “just how things work here.” A decision-making bottleneck becomes accepted as inevitable rather than recognised as a specific, fixable structural choice.<\/p>\n
This normalisation is exactly why fresh perspective \u2014 a new hire, an external consultant, a leader deliberately stepping back to look at the system rather than working within it \u2014 often spots obstacles that longtime insiders have stopped seeing entirely.<\/p>\n
Approval bottlenecks.<\/strong> Decisions that require sign-off from more people than the stakes actually justify slow everything down, often without any corresponding improvement in decision quality. The more people required to approve something, the more diluted accountability becomes for whether it was actually the right call.<\/p>\n Unclear ownership.<\/strong> When a decision or a piece of work doesn’t have a single, clearly accountable owner, it tends to drift \u2014 not because anyone is being obstructive, but because ambiguity about who’s actually responsible is a reliable way to ensure nobody feels fully empowered to act.<\/p>\n Outdated processes that outlived their original purpose.<\/strong> Many internal processes were built to solve a specific problem at a specific point in the organisation’s history and never revisited once that problem changed or disappeared. The process persists out of habit long after its original justification has quietly expired.<\/p>\n Poor information flow.<\/strong> Decisions made without access to the information that should inform them \u2014 because it’s siloed in another department, buried in an outdated system, or simply never shared \u2014 produce worse outcomes and slower progress than decisions made with genuine visibility.<\/p>\n Risk aversion disproportionate to the actual stakes.<\/strong> Some organisations apply the same level of caution and process to low-stakes decisions as to genuinely consequential ones, which spreads scarce deliberation time across everything rather than concentrating it where it actually matters.<\/p>\n Ask the people doing the work, directly and specifically.<\/strong> The people closest to a process usually have the clearest view of where it actually breaks down \u2014 a direct, genuine question (“what’s the most frustrating part of getting this done?”) surfaces obstacles that wouldn’t otherwise reach leadership.<\/p>\n Map the actual process, not the official one.<\/strong> There’s often a meaningful gap between how a process is documented and how it actually happens in practice \u2014 including the informal workarounds people have quietly adopted because the official version doesn’t work well. Mapping the real version reveals where the friction genuinely lives.<\/p>\n Distinguish between necessary caution and habitual caution.<\/strong> Some approval steps and checks exist for genuinely good reasons tied to real risk. Others exist simply because they always have. Periodically asking “what would happen if we removed this step?” is a useful test for telling the two apart.<\/p>\n Fix ownership before fixing process.<\/strong> A process redesign without clear accountability for who owns the outcome tends to drift back toward the old pattern within months. Assigning clear, specific ownership is often a prerequisite for any process change actually sticking.<\/p>\n Pilot changes before rolling them out broadly.<\/strong> Removing a barrier organisation-wide in one move carries real risk if the change turns out to have unintended consequences. A smaller pilot, reviewed honestly, reduces that risk while still building momentum.<\/p>\n A department head keeps hearing, informally, that a particular approval process is slow and frustrating, but nobody has ever formally flagged it as a problem worth fixing. Rather than assuming it’s simply the cost of doing business, she asks her team directly what the actual bottleneck is, and maps the real, current process rather than the one described in the outdated documentation.<\/p>\n It turns out the process requires sign-off from a role that was relevant years earlier but hasn’t actually needed to weigh in on this particular type of decision in a long time \u2014 a step that survives purely out of habit. Removing it, after confirming there’s no genuine risk being managed by that step, cuts the average approval time by more than half. The fix wasn’t complicated. It required someone to actually question an assumption everyone else had stopped examining.<\/p>\n Assuming internal friction is simply how the organisation works.<\/strong> Treating self-created obstacles as fixed features rather than fixable choices leaves genuine, addressable problems unaddressed indefinitely.<\/p>\n Fixing process without fixing ownership.<\/strong> A redesigned process without a clearly accountable owner tends to drift back toward the old, familiar pattern once initial attention fades.<\/p>\n Removing barriers without checking what they were actually protecting against.<\/strong> Some steps that look like pure friction are quietly managing a real risk \u2014 it’s worth confirming that before removing them, not simply assuming every barrier is unnecessary.<\/p>\n Relying only on leadership’s own view of where the obstacles are.<\/strong> Leaders are often furthest from where the actual friction lives \u2014 direct input from the people doing the work is essential, not optional.<\/p>\n Not every barrier to progress is beyond an organisation’s control. A meaningful share of the friction people experience daily is self-created \u2014 a process that outlived its purpose, an approval step nobody’s questioned in years, an ownership gap nobody’s noticed. These are exactly the obstacles a leader has real power to remove, provided someone’s willing to ask the unglamorous question of why things are done the way they are, rather than assuming the current friction is simply the cost of doing business.<\/p>\n How do I tell the difference between a necessary process step and unnecessary friction?<\/strong> Should every organisational obstacle be removed as quickly as possible?<\/strong> How can I get honest feedback from my team about internal obstacles?<\/strong> What’s the biggest reason internal obstacles persist for so long?<\/strong> Does removing internal obstacles always require a large restructuring effort?<\/strong> How do I know if a process change actually worked?<\/strong> Not every obstacle to progress comes from outside the organisation. Many are self-created, and those are exactly the ones a leader has the power to remove.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,19],"tags":[44,9,20,35],"class_list":["post-2058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","category-management-skills","tag-change-management","tag-leadership","tag-management-skills","tag-organisational-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Leaders Identify and Remove Real Barriers<\/h2>\n
A Practical Scenario<\/h2>\n
Common Mistakes<\/h2>\n
Action Steps<\/h2>\n
\n
Key Takeaways<\/h2>\n
\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n
Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2>\n
\nAsk directly what risk or outcome the step is actually protecting against. If there’s a clear, specific answer, it’s likely necessary. If the answer is vague or historical (“we’ve always done it this way”), it’s worth questioning further.<\/p>\n
\nNot necessarily \u2014 some obstacles serve a genuine purpose, and removing them too quickly without understanding what they’re protecting against can create new problems. A deliberate, tested approach is safer than a sweeping one.<\/p>\n
\nAsk specific, direct questions rather than general ones, and make clear that honest input about frustrations will be genuinely welcomed and acted on, not held against the person raising it.<\/p>\n
\nNormalisation \u2014 people who work within a system for a long time often stop questioning its friction points, simply because they’ve never known an alternative.<\/p>\n
\nNo \u2014 many of the most effective fixes are small and targeted, like removing a single unnecessary approval step or clarifying who owns a specific decision.<\/p>\n
\nSet a specific, measurable expectation before making the change \u2014 faster approval times, fewer escalations, clearer ownership \u2014 and review it honestly afterward rather than assuming success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"