September 2026
Organizations make plans because plans create direction.
We decide what we want to accomplish, determine how we believe we can accomplish it, and begin moving.
Over time, however, something subtle can happen.
The plan and the objective become inseparable.
We stop asking whether the method is working and begin defending the method because changing it feels like abandoning the goal.
But they are not the same thing.
The objective is where we are trying to go.
The mechanism is how we currently believe we can get there.
One deserves commitment. The other deserves scrutiny.
A company wants to increase production, so it hires more people. It wants more customers, so it spends more on advertising. It wants better communication, so it adds meetings. It wants better information, so it purchases software. It wants greater accountability, so it creates more reporting.
Each decision can be reasonable. But each is still only a mechanism.
If production does not improve, the company does not necessarily need to abandon its production goal. It needs to understand why hiring did not produce the expected result.
If advertising generates traffic but not customers, the objective of growth has not failed. The chosen mechanism may simply be addressing the wrong constraint.
This distinction becomes particularly important when a strategy has already consumed time, money, and effort.
The longer we invest in something, the easier it becomes to defend what we have built instead of questioning whether it is still taking us where we intended to go.
That is when persistence can quietly become attachment.
Good organizations need persistence. They also need the discipline to recognize what persistence should be attached to.
Sometimes the right decision is to stay the course. Sometimes it is to change direction. Sometimes it is to stop entirely.
The question is not whether the original plan deserves loyalty. The question is whether the evidence still connects that plan to the objective.
There is also danger in the opposite direction.
Changing methods every time progress becomes difficult is not adaptability. It is instability.
A mechanism should not be abandoned simply because it encounters resistance. It should be questioned when evidence shows that the assumptions supporting it no longer hold.
The purpose of reflection is not to create hesitation. It is to separate difficulty from dysfunction.
When progress stalls, ask:
Has the objective changed?
If not: Is the mechanism still capable of achieving it?
And if the answer is unclear: What would we need to observe to know?
Those questions create room to adapt without losing direction.
Organizations do not become resilient by perfectly predicting the path ahead. They become resilient by knowing what must remain constant – and what they are willing to change when reality teaches them something new.
The destination and the road are not the same thing.
Remembering the difference can keep a difficult road from convincing us that we chose the wrong destination.
It can also keep our commitment to the destination from trapping us on a road that no longer leads there.
Observe. Understand. Solve. Improve. Pass It Forward.