Principles

When a company is not growing, external reasons are easy to find.

The economy is weak.

Customers are postponing decisions.

Competition has increased.

Good people are hard to find in the labour market.

Technology is changing too quickly.

Regulation makes it difficult to operate.

All of these factors may be entirely real.

Yet in the same market, economy, and regulatory environment, one company manages to grow while another does not.

The external environment affects everyone.

A company’s internal logic determines how it responds to that impact.

Very often, growth is not held back by one large, visible problem.

It is held back by several contradictions built into the company, pulling the organisation in different directions at the same time.

The company says one thing, measures another, funds a third, and rewards a fourth.

Everyone is working.

The whole is not moving.

A hidden contradiction means two reasonable things working against each other

Most internal contradictions in companies do not arise from foolish decisions.

Each decision may be entirely reasonable when viewed in isolation.

Sales wants more customers.

Operations wants fewer exceptions.

Finance wants lower costs.

Product development wants better quality.

The leader wants to control risks.

Employees want more decision-making authority.

The problem arises when no one decides which of these objectives matters more in a specific situation.

For example, sales may be accountable only for revenue and therefore promise a bespoke solution to a customer.

At the same time, operations is accountable for efficiency and needs a standardised service.

Each department can achieve its own objective only at the other’s expense.

This is not an interpersonal conflict.

The organisation itself has built a contradiction into their roles.

The company wants to grow but still routes every decision through the founder

This is one of the most common contradictions in a young company.

The leader wants more customers, a larger team, and faster development.

At the same time, every important decision must reach them.

They approve prices.

Review proposals.

Attend key customer meetings.

Decide product details.

Resolve conflicts between departments.

Control recruitment.

Each activity may seem justified in isolation.

Together, they mean the company can grow only as far as the leader’s personal decision-making capacity allows.

Hiring new people does not reduce the leader’s workload if they merely bring the leader more questions.

The company wants growth, but its management model assumes that one person can stay informed about everything.

These two things cannot coexist in one system for long.

The company wants independent people but punishes independent decisions

Leadership says people should take more responsibility.

Yet their decisions are later overturned.

A mistake receives far more attention than a good independent choice.

Someone who raises an important problem early comes to be seen as negative.

Every unusual situation must reach the leader.

Employees quickly learn what the organisation truly expects of them.

Not independence.

Guessing the leader’s preference.

Leadership then complains that people do not think for themselves and wait for instructions.

In reality, employees behave exactly according to the system leadership has created.

A company cannot demand accountability while retaining all decision-making authority with its leaders.

The company wants quality but measures only speed

Leadership may talk about high quality.

But if projects are assessed only by deadline, scope, and budget, people optimise those measures.

Problems are deferred.

Technical debt grows.

Quality control is rushed.

The customer receives the solution on time, but the company later pays for errors, customer support, and rework.

The opposite contradiction is also possible.

The company wants to learn quickly from the market, but every small experiment must meet the quality standard of a finished product.

Nothing reaches the customer until it is perfect.

Neither speed nor quality is automatically the right choice.

Leadership must decide at which stage of the work learning speed matters more and when quality can no longer be compromised.

If that choice is not made and both are instead demanded at their maximum, responsibility for resolving the contradiction shifts to employees.

The company wants premium pricing but builds the cheapest possible solution

A premium position does not arise from price alone.

The customer must experience greater value, lower risk, stronger trust, or a clearly better outcome.

Yet the company’s internal decisions may focus only on reducing costs.

The cheapest tools are selected.

People are hired because they cost less, rather than because their expertise creates a better outcome.

Customer support is reduced.

No time is allowed for quality control.

Product development decisions are based on internal convenience, not the customer’s outcome.

Marketing promises a premium experience.

The organisation delivers a service optimised for cost.

It then appears that the market is unwilling to pay a higher price.

In reality, the customer may see no reason to do so.

The company wants to scale but makes an exception for every customer

Sales wants to win the deal.

The offer, price, contract, features, and service are therefore customised.

An individual deal may be profitable.

But every exception adds new complexity to the company.

Product development must maintain different versions.

Operations needs customer-specific ways of working.

Customer support must know the special agreements.

Finance must account for different pricing models.

The company talks about scaling, but its sales behaviour makes repeatability weaker with every deal.

Both objectives cannot apply without limit at the same time.

If the company wants to scale, it must decide which customer and which exception no longer fit its model.

The company wants innovation but does not tolerate failure

Innovation means testing new assumptions.

Not every experiment can succeed.

If every failed experiment damages someone’s reputation, budget, or performance review, the organisation quickly learns to avoid risk.

People propose only ideas whose success can be proved in advance.

Those are no longer genuinely new ideas.

At the same time, supporting innovation does not mean that every project may fail to produce results indefinitely.

The company needs clarity about:

• which assumption the experiment is designed to test;
• how much time and money may be used;
• which kind of failure represents learning;
• which kind of failure represents negligence;
• when the experiment will be stopped;
• how the knowledge gained will flow back into the organisation.

If leadership wants innovation but evaluates every initiative with the certainty expected of a mature business, the contradiction is built into the system.

The company wants collaboration but departments compete through their metrics

There is a great deal of talk about collaboration.

But people optimise what they are evaluated on.

If marketing is measured by the number of leads, it brings in many leads.

If sales is measured by revenue, it closes deals.

If operations is measured by cost efficiency, it tries to avoid exceptions.

If customer support is measured by response time, it responds quickly.

Everyone may turn their own metric green.

The customer may still receive a poor outcome and the company may lose money.

Collaboration does not arise because people are invited to a joint meeting.

It arises when their accountability and metrics help achieve the same overall outcome.

If a department can improve its own result at the expense of the company’s total result, conflict is written into the organisational design.

The company wants strong people but does not want to hear their views

Leadership says it wants to hire people smarter than itself.

It then expects those people to do things in exactly the same way as the leader.

A strong person brings their own experience, questions, and different solutions.

If they were hired only to execute the leader’s ideas better, their expertise is not being used.

The company has bought an expensive pair of hands.

After a while, one of two things usually happens.

The person adapts, stops asking questions, and becomes less valuable to the organisation.

Or they leave.

The company concludes that there was no cultural fit.

In reality, what may have been missing was the willingness to let a strong person have a genuine impact.

The company wants long-term growth but rewards only today’s number

Short-term performance is necessary.

Without cash flow and customers, the company will not reach the future.

But if every decision is based only on the current month’s revenue or profit, the capabilities needed for the next stage of growth are never built.

Process improvements are deferred.

Developing people takes second place to operational work.

Technical debt grows.

There is no time to test a new model.

Every strong person is fully occupied with today’s tasks.

Leadership wants long-term growth but uses every resource to maintain today’s performance.

The opposite extreme is equally dangerous.

The company invests endlessly in the future but fails to create viable cash flow.

Leadership’s task is to decide which share of resources protects today’s company and which builds tomorrow’s capability.

If this choice is not made consciously, the most urgent problem will always win.

The company wants leverage from AI but does not know what to amplify

Artificial intelligence can make a company considerably faster.

But first, it must be clear which work creates value.

In an unclear company, every department begins using AI to increase its own activities.

Marketing produces more content.

Sales sends more messages.

Development creates more features.

Leadership receives more analyses.

If the target audience, accountability, the meaning of data, and priorities are unclear, output increases.

The overall result may not improve.

The company wants efficiency from AI but automates processes whose necessity has not been tested.

It wants better decisions, but decision-making authority still remains with one leader.

AI does not resolve an organisation’s internal contradiction.

It may simply make it visible faster or operate it on a much larger scale.

Hidden contradictions arise at departmental boundaries

Within one department, everything may appear logical.

The contradiction becomes visible where work moves to the next department.

Marketing brings in leads that sales does not consider suitable.

Sales promises something that delivery cannot provide at the standard price.

Product development builds features that customer support cannot explain.

HR hires people into roles whose outcomes leaders have not defined.

Finance cuts costs in a place that creates more manual work for another team.

Improving an organisation therefore requires more than optimising departments separately.

The flow of value must be examined from beginning to end.

Where does a good result in one area become a problem for another?

That is often where the hidden contradiction lies.

External factors expose internal contradictions

In a strong market, an unclear company may operate for a long time.

Demand is high.

Customers’ money covers inefficiency.

Growth conceals process problems.

New people are hired faster than internal complexity becomes visible.

When the market slows, the contradictions emerge.

The cost of sales rises.

Margins shrink.

Customers become more demanding.

Leadership must make choices that could previously be postponed.

It may therefore appear that an external change caused the company’s problems.

Often, it merely exposed problems that favourable market conditions had been financing.

External pressure may not be the main constraint on growth.

It may simply remove the buffer that concealed the company’s own lack of clarity.

How do you find hidden contradictions?

A contradiction cannot be found by looking only at the numbers.

You must compare what the company says with what its system actually does.

1. What does the company claim is its priority?

Growth, profitability, quality, customer experience, innovation, or employee autonomy?

2. Where do the money and people’s time go?

The budget and the calendar reveal the real priority.

3. How are people evaluated?

Metrics guide behaviour more powerfully than values.

4. Who has decision-making authority?

Accountability without decision-making authority creates an owner in name only.

5. Which exceptions does leadership allow?

Recurring exceptions reveal the real rules.

6. Where does one department’s success create more work for another?

That is likely where accountability or metrics conflict.

7. Which behaviour is rewarded?

Not officially, but through promotion, money, and attention.

8. Which important choice has been left for employees to resolve?

That is often where an unmade leadership decision lies.

A contradiction is resolved by a choice, not a compromise

Companies often try to resolve internal contradictions while retaining every objective.

They want maximum speed and maximum quality.

Complete autonomy and complete control.

Standardisation and unlimited customer exceptions.

Lower costs and greater service capacity.

Sometimes process improvement or technology can support both objectives.

But often, a choice must be made.

In which situation is one objective more important than the other?

Which limit is acceptable?

What are we prepared to give up?

If leadership does not make this choice, the contradiction is resolved differently every day.

One employee favours speed.

Another favours quality.

A third favours the customer’s request.

A fourth favours the internal standard.

The result is not flexibility.

The result is unpredictability.

Organisational clarity means consciously resolving contradictions

A clear company is not one in which objectives never conflict.

A clear company knows how to choose when they do.

It has agreed:

• which customer is the right customer;
• which outcome matters most right now;
• which exceptions are allowed;
• which risk is acceptable;
• who makes the final decision;
• when speed matters more than quality;
• when profitability must take precedence over revenue;
• which behaviour is unacceptable even when it produces a good result.

These choices reduce the need to take every situation to the leader.

People can decide for themselves because the organisation’s underlying logic is clear.

Growth is not always unlocked by a new opportunity

A company’s growth is not always constrained by a lack of market demand, capital, or people.

Sometimes everything necessary is already there.

Customers want to buy.

The team has strong people.

The technology enables it.

There is enough money.

But the company’s own decisions work against one another.

It wants to grow but does not delegate responsibility.

It wants to scale but makes exceptions for everyone.

It wants quality but rewards only speed.

It wants strong people but expects them to agree.

It wants innovation but does not tolerate the failures required for learning.

Such a company does not necessarily need another strategy, software system, or employee.

First, it must stop working against itself.

The company cannot control external factors.

It can control the logic of its own strategy, accountability, metrics, processes, and decision-making.

Growth often begins not by finding a new opportunity, but by removing the internal contradiction that prevented the company from using the opportunity it already had.

Mikk Orglaan

Challeng.ist