The Design Lie
What it sounds like
“We’re different.”
“Our situation is unique.”
“That might work elsewhere, but our context is more complex.”
“You have to understand our industry.”
These things may all be true.
That’s what makes this one so convincing.
Why it makes sense
Every organisation is different.
Its history is different. Its people, market, regulation, ownership, technology and customers create a combination that exists nowhere else in quite the same form.
Experienced leaders know that context matters. They have probably watched somebody arrive with a playbook from another company, apply it without understanding the environment and discover that what worked brilliantly elsewhere fails here.
So scepticism about universal answers is healthy.
The problem begins when “we’re different” stops being context and starts becoming an explanation.
Results are disappointing because the market is difficult. Decisions take too long because the business is complex. Change is slow because of the legacy technology. Hiring is hard because the talent doesn’t exist. Previous interventions failed because this organisation isn’t like the places where they worked before.
Every explanation may contain truth.
Together, they can create a remarkably convincing reason not to look at the system itself.
What it hides
Organisations are shaped by thousands of decisions that made sense when they were made.
A process was added because something went wrong. Governance increased because risk needed controlling. Another priority appeared because an opportunity mattered. A senior person started approving decisions because it was quicker. A workaround stayed because replacing it never quite became urgent enough.
Nobody sat down and designed the organisation that exists today.
But there is still a design.
It is there in who can make decisions, where information travels, what gets prioritised, what gets rewarded, what requires approval, how much work is in flight and what people have learned they need to do to get something through the system.
And that design produces consequences whether anybody chose it deliberately or not.
The design nobody chose is still the design running the place.
That is what “we’re different” can hide.
It directs attention towards the uniqueness of the circumstances rather than asking whether the organisation has gradually created conditions that make its current results entirely predictable.
The uncomfortable possibility
What if the organisation isn’t struggling despite its design?
What if some of the struggle is being produced by it?
That doesn’t make the market easier, remove regulation, modernise the technology or magically produce people with scarce skills. External constraints are real.
But two organisations facing similar constraints can produce very different results because of what happens inside them.
One makes decisions quickly while another takes six weeks. One concentrates scarce capability while another spreads it across fifteen priorities. One gets uncomfortable information to the people who need it while another gradually filters it out. One finishes important work while another keeps starting more.
The difference isn’t always effort or talent.
Sometimes it is the system those people are working inside.
TEST IT
How much of this problem is really caused by our circumstances, and how much is caused by the way we’ve chosen to operate?
Look at one persistent frustration and temporarily remove “that’s just how our industry/business/history works” as an explanation.
What decisions, structures, habits or accumulated compromises inside the organisation are helping to produce the outcome?
You don’t have to conclude that everything is your design.
You just have to become curious about the part that is.
Because “we’re different” may explain the context. It doesn’t explain away the consequences of how you’ve chosen to operate inside it.
Last updated October 2026
