Spring Cleaning Your Organisation: Why Tidying Up Won’t Fix a Structural Mess (Part 1 of 3)
I’ll admit it: I am obsessed with decluttering shows. There is a deep, primal satisfaction in watching a chaotic space get transformed, and honestly, nothing beats the feeling of loading up a couple of bags of unused stuff and dropping them off at the op shop.
At my own desk, I’m the person who secretly delights in lining up every single coloured pen in its designated pot, and I get a strange amount of peace from sharpening all my pencils to a razor-sharp point. People have laughed at me for this ? I just like to know which coloured pen I'm picking up and that I have a nice point on my pencil! 🤷♀️
When spring arrives, that urge to refresh hits us in the workplace. We clear out bloated digital folders, archive old emails, and clean up our desks.
In leadership, we often do the exact same thing on an organisational scale: we launch new productivity drives, rearrange the org chart, or roll out a wellness app.
It feels great for about a week. But then the clutter, and the operational friction, comes right back!
The hard truth? Dropping a few bags at the op shop clears space, but it doesn't fix the habits or conditions that created the clutter in the first place.
Tidying Symptoms vs. Diagnosing Systems
Surface "Tidying" (Treating Symptoms):
Systems Diagnostic (Finding Root Causes):
Coming Up in Part 2...
Next week, in Part 2, we will pull back the rug on the hidden sources of organisational clutter and how Carol Bacchi’s WPR framework helps leaders diagnose root causes instead of constantly tidying symptoms.
Originally Published on Linkedin
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