An organization experiencing disruption or breakdown that affects its ability to function properly. It may struggle to make equipment work. It may have become over-reliant on a single resource or vendor, or things that used to work simply aren’t working anymore.

Problems rarely come alone. What begins as a market shift or the loss of key personnel can quickly cascade, amplified by missing information or siloed decision-making. An incident may expose a deeper weakness. Often this is an early indicator of structural weakness: an organization ossifying, people working increasingly in siloes, oversight lacking, resulting in the inability to adequately respond to new demands. When the situation persists, knock-on effects accumulate. Acting swiftly avoids worse.

Such problems are diffuse by nature. They touch multiple functions and cannot be solved locally. A holistic approach is required, one that takes into account all the moving pieces, recognizes the emerging pattern, and informs a possible way forward. It is an open-ended problem, with no specific solution; only a recovery of process, system, or structure. Sometimes through temporary stand-in, sometimes through reorientation, so function gets restored.