There is a specific moment that I hear described in almost identical terms across very different organisations.
The CEO has solved a problem. Properly solved it, not patched it. They brought in the right person, restructured the function, clarified the process, had the difficult conversation. For a period, things improve.
And then, some months later, something appears. It’s not identical to the original problem. But it has the same shape. The same feel. The same location in the organisation.
We’ve been here before.
Structural Recurrence is not the same problem returning. It is the same structure generating a new instance of the same problem. The condition that produced the original issue was never addressed, because it was never identified. The solution was applied to the symptom. The architecture underneath it remained.
This is why the problem comes back in a different form. The structure keeps producing pressure. The pressure finds the nearest available outlet. When that outlet is closed, it finds another.
A team that kept losing senior people. Different people, different reasons given, different exit interviews. The same structural condition underneath, producing the same pressure on everyone who stepped into that layer of the organisation.
A decision that kept arriving on the CEO’s desk despite repeated attempts to push it down. Different topics, different functions, different people bringing it. The same gap in decision authority generating the same gravity upward.
An initiative that stalled at the same stage three times across three years. Different teams, different sponsors, different names given to the project. The same structural sequence failure occurring at the same inflection point every time.
The problem is not recurring. The structure is.
Myrto Zehnder partners with CEOs and founders of scaling organisations on the structural architecture underneath recurring organisational problems. This is the sixth in a series on seven patterns from the field.
The Eagle’s Perspective — myrtozehnder.com