You’re not tired. You’re bored.

Most people in most organisations claim to be tired.

My guess is, you do too.

My controversial take is that they aren't really tired, they're just tired of is going around in circles. Bored senseless by the same meetings, the same issues, the same tensions, the same priorities and the same problems reappearing in different forms year after year, yet having to call it ‘progress’. Putting on a productive face when they'd really rather be doing something else.

They are tired of chasing, of being busy, and the loss of the potential for meaningful work.

This is the life too many so-called 'leaders' are propagating in their organisations and it’s leading to something too scary to acknowledge – your people are bored and disenageged.

This is a side effect of management

(A lack of true leadership.)

The hallmarks of management are the endless talking about problems, smoothing over of issues, excuses, blaming, avoidance and lack of true understanding of what causes the same thing to crop up time and time again wearing a new dress.

Everyone talks aout the issue yet surprisingly few are willing to get underneath it because one thing is for sure – the root is more uncomfortable than the symptom.

Chances are, it’s got something to do with people. Or leadership. Likely, both.

The conversations that aren’t happening, the person no-one wants to confront, the dog and pony show of internal-PR showcasing the good and downplaying the bad that has just become part of business instead of acknowledging the honest truth.

The leader everyone works around, the lack of consistent standards, the fear and frustration, flat out confusion and finger-pointing-in-the-other-direction.

Sound familiar?

The organisation fixes the visible thing. Over and over. Restructures, new roles, processes, dashboards, systems, team building … something that gives the irrational yet highly desirable certainty of doing something, whilst leaving the actual cause largely untouched.

Then, months later, the same problem turns up in a different outfit.

This is why work feels so dull. People fundamentally know that much of what they do doesn’t move the needle. Conversations that rush to fix problems sustain them, because they create the appearance of movement without the discomfort of understanding.

The missing ingredient is invariably and so simply, questions.

Not polite questions, performative consultation, or the kind of questions leaders ask when they already have the answer and are waiting for everyone else to catch up. Real questions. The kind that slow people down and make people look underneath the obvious explanation.

Questions that elicit what’s never been acknowledged.

What is really stopping us from winning?

What are we pretending not to know?

Who are we protecting?

What conversations are we avoiding?

What would the people closest to the problem say if we asked them?

‘Managed’ organisations often have the question flow completely backwards. The people lower down the hierarchy are expected to ask questions of the people above them, while the people above them are expected to have answers. It sounds normal because we are used to it, but it is absurd.

The people closest to the work understand the problems most clearly. They see where the process breaks, where the customer is frustrated, where the handover fails, where leadership’s ideas collapse under the weight of reality. But because they are perceived as “junior,” they are often told what to do rather than asked what they know.

So the people furthest from the work keep providing answers to problems they do not fully understand, while the people closest to the truth habitually say nothing.

This is the difference between management and leadership. Management tries to solve the problem quickly enough to restore control; leadership gets curious enough to understand what is actually happening.

Management smooths the symptom; leadership goes to the cause.

Asking questions can feel slower, especially inside organisations addicted to the speed of shallow answers.

But moving quickly in a circle is still a circle.

Unmanaged leadership refuses to maintain the loop; it’s desire is to break it unapologetically.

Unmanaged leaders aren’t interested in being the person with the answers. They know to succeed they need to ask more than they tell, to listen longer than they would like and to seek the real truth, not that which will create comfort around the boardroom table.

The seek the truth and trust that in truth, the answers will become obvious.

If you want change, ask better questions.

If you want progress, ask more of them.

If you want to create energy in your organisation, stop trying to fix what you have not yet understood.

That is where business becomes energizing again. The loop breaks. The conversation changes. The organisation stops managing symptoms and begins discovering causes.

Real progress feels magnificent.

Where are you rushing to answers because questions would expose something more uncomfortable? Where are you solving the same problem in another form because people aren’t asking what is really causing it? And what would change if the people closest to the work were treated as the people closest to the truth?

Are you tired? What are you really tired of?