Series
German has a word for what's going wrong in your organisation.
Every episode carries one German word. Not as a language joke: each one names something that goes wrong in organisations, and that English needs a whole sentence for.
“egg-laying, wool-producing, milk-giving pig”
One solution expected to do absolutely everything at once.
One segmentation model. It should answer marketing, pricing, product development, sales resourcing and service. All at once. German has a whole animal for this.
A model designed to answer every question usually answers none of them particularly well.
“occupational therapy”
Activity that keeps you busy without moving anything forward.
Reporting. CRM administration. Internal reports. A full week of work that changed absolutely nothing.
Reporting is necessary. But if it fills your week, you're explaining the business instead of improving it.
“watering-can principle”
The same treatment poured evenly over everyone, regardless of need.
"Let's just raise everything by three percent." Every price was once different, each for a reason. Nobody wrote the reasons down.
The price list survives. The strategy behind it is already gone. That three percent feels harmless. It isn't.
“sham consensus”
Everyone agrees on the word. Nobody agrees on the meaning.
Everyone in the room agreed. Marketing said lead. Sales said lead. Nobody was wrong, and nobody meant the same thing.
Agreement on the word is not agreement on the meaning. The most dangerous meetings are the ones where everybody nods.
“to worsen-improve”
Making something worse while trying to make it better.
Someone decides to improve a process nobody has ever watched. Six months later it's slower than before.
You can't improve what you don't understand. Without understanding, you have a small chance of fixing the problem, and a very large chance of making it worse.
“should-break point”
The place a designer deliberately makes weakest, so failure happens where it's cheap and predictable.
Engineers do something that sounds absurd: they decide in advance where a part should break.
Every organisation has breaking points. Most of them just never chose where. Deciding in advance what is allowed to fail is not pessimism. It's the difference between a controlled break and a surprise.
“schnapps idea”
An idea that sounds brilliant in the moment, and indefensible the next morning.
Day two of the offsite. Late evening. Someone says something that sounds brilliant, and the whole room lights up. By Monday it has an owner and a budget line.
Every organisation produces them, and that's fine. Enthusiasm is where ideas start. The problem is when an idea gets an owner and a budget faster than anyone can check whether it holds. A Schnapsidee isn't dangerous at night. It's dangerous on Monday.
“water head”
An administrative centre that grew far beyond what the body it serves can carry.
Headquarters added four roles this year. The field lost two. Everyone can name the new roles. Nobody can name what they changed.
Overhead isn't wrong. Coordination is real work. The test is simple: if the centre grows while the value-creating edge shrinks, you're not coordinating anymore. You're compensating.
