Spring Cleaning Your Organisation: Pulling Back the Rug on Hidden Clutter (Part 2 of 3)

In Part 1, I confessed my love of order: from lining up my coloured pens in neat little rows and sharpening pencils to a razor point, to the pure satisfaction of hauling two giant bags of stuff to the op shop.

I also looked at why standard corporate "tidying" (like shuffling org chart seats or rolling out yet another wellness app) fails. Dropping a few bags at the op shop clears physical space, but it does not stop the clutter from accumulating again next month.

At some point, we have to stop rearranging the furniture and ask who keeps bringing the clutter inside.

To fix chronic organisational mess, we have to pull back the rug and inspect the floorboards.

The 3 Hidden Sources of Structural Clutter

Over years of analysing organisational systems, I have found that the operational "mess" executive teams complain about is rarely caused by lazy employees or poor time management. It is almost always generated by three hidden structural drivers: Key points right here 👇

1. "Problem Representation" Clutter (Carol Bacchi’s WPR Lens)

In my work, I draw heavily on Carol Bacchi’s WPR (What’s the Problem Represented to be?) framework. When leadership assumes a communication problem, their instinct is to add more meetings and messaging channels. But if the actual underlying condition is unclear decision-making authority, those extra meetings are just corporate noise. You have not fixed the issue; you have just given everyone a second job called "attending meetings about the problem."

2. Legacy Process Drag

Every organisation has operational "ghosts": reporting procedures, approval loops, or compliance steps that were created years ago to solve an issue that no longer exists. Over time, these processes pile up like unread magazines in a hallway, choking your team's day-to-day capacity until simply signing off on a document requires three committee approvals.

3. Misaligned Pacing & Capacity

When everything is marked as a top strategic priority, nothing actually is. Asking a team to continuously "sprint" without auditing their baseline operational capacity is the organisational equivalent of hoarding tasks until the system collapses under its own weight. (And no, a Friday pizza lunch will not clear that backlog).

Coming Up in Part 3...

Next week, in our final installment, I will share 3 diagnostic questions every leadership team should ask before launching their next operational refresh or restructuring. (Spoiler: None of them involve creating another working group or committee).

Originally Published on Linkedin

Read Next in the Series