by Lizzie Pollock, Partner, Team Effectiveness
Many organizational challenges look complicated on the surface. Teams feel stuck, accountability blurs, and well-intentioned people find themselves working at cross purposes.
Yet in many cases, the root of the problem is surprisingly simple: people are not aligned on two basic questions.
What is the work?
Whose work is it?
Over the last five years, I’ve worked with dozens of teams that, at their core, struggled with one or both of them. Sometimes the work itself isn’t clearly defined. Teams are busy, but not aligned around what matters most. Other times the work is clear, but ownership is not. Multiple people assume something belongs to someone else, or the same work exists in several places at once.
I was recently reintroduced to the concept of Systems Leadership, developed by Dr. Ian MacDonald, Catherine Burke, and Karl Stewart—a set of theories and frameworks for building positive organizations that are both humane and productive by focusing on the social and structural elements that enable success. One of the core ideas within Systems Leadership is that many organizational and structural problems can be addressed by asking and answering these two deceptively simple questions.
What I’ve come to appreciate is how often progress begins simply by slowing down long enough to ask these questions directly.
Organizational Design
I recently spent two days working with the executive leadership team of a national nonprofit seeking to re-envision its organizational design and structure.
Many organizational design efforts start by moving boxes and lines around an org chart – removing some, adding others. Instead, our work was framed by two questions.
What is the work?
What does this organization need to be great at to achieve its mission? What should it stop doing, or do differently, to enable success? How well are doing these things today? What would it take for us to truly excel: through upskilling our people, adding new roles, or creating new functions?
Whose work is it?
Once we were clear about the work, we could group that work into roles. We set aside what has been and envisioned what could be. The conversation wasn’t about specific people, but about the roles needed to activate the work identified in the earlier discussions.
What became clear through this process is that organizational design works best when it starts with the work itself. Once we are clear about what needs to be done, the question of whose work it is becomes much easier to answer.
But these questions are just as powerful at the team level, where confusion about purpose and ownership can quietly undermine effectiveness.
Team Dynamics
One of our core offerings at LEAD3R is a Team Accelerator – a six-month journey that helps teams understand what is working well, what is holding them back, and how they can address their most pressing challenges.
Last year, I worked with a cross-functional team at a biotech company whose work is critical to the organization’s success. During one-on-one listening conversations with each team member, I heard a common theme.
One person shared,
“This team feels like a group of individuals working independently toward the same goal.”
Another said,
“It’s not very strategic. It’s very execution-focused. Is that its purpose—to be execution focused?”
And a third observed,
“Sometimes it’s obvious something has already been discussed within the leadership team, and it can feel like the topic is being brought to us as a box-ticking exercise.”
These comments suggested the team wasn’t clear about what it was meant to do. The team had a stated purpose, but because both their actions and their leaders’ actions weren’t always aligned with it, members were left confused about their role.
One exercise I led asked the team to analyze a recent decision they had been part of. What was the work involved in that decision? What steps did we take? What were the key moments that led to the outcome?
Mapping the decision visually helped the team see what had worked well and where there were pain points. Interestingly, there weren’t many.
In mapping the work, they realized the roles had actually been quite clear. This team was an execution body, not a decision-making body. Answering the question, “Whose work is it?” helped the team let go of its confusion and embrace the clarity that had been there all along.
What shifted for the team wasn’t the work itself, it was their shared understanding of it. By stepping back and asking what the work actually was and whose work it was, they were able to see their role more clearly.
Sometimes the most powerful shifts in teams don’t come from new tools or processes, but from returning to a few simple questions that clarify how the work really gets done.
What is the work?
Whose work is it?
These are simple questions, but not always easy ones. Answering them honestly often requires letting go of assumptions about how things have always been done.
If we take time to answer them , something important happens. The work becomes clearer, roles become more meaningful, and people are better able to contribute their strengths to what matters most.
