The businesses that look busiest often have the least visibility
“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
— Herbert Simon
One thing I keep noticing is that overwhelmed businesses often aren’t disorganised because people don’t care.
Usually it’s the opposite.
They care deeply, work constantly and keep adding systems, workarounds and quick fixes just to keep things moving.
From the outside, the business can look successful:
busy inboxes
active social media
growing enquiries
constant movement
lots happening
But internally, visibility slowly starts disappearing.
The business is failing, sort of just stalling. It’s funny how complexity accumulates much faster than structure.
Over time:
files end up scattered
communication becomes fragmented
reporting gets delayed
workflows become reactive
approvals live in text messages
assets sit across different platforms
and important operational knowledge starts living inside specific people
At first, most businesses compensate manually because people remember things. They fill gaps, chase information. It’s almost like they become the system themselves.
That works for a while.
Until the operational load becomes too heavy to carry mentally.
That’s usually the point where businesses start feeling:
harder to manage
harder to hand over
harder to scale
and strangely harder to see clearly from the inside
I’ve seen versions of this across:
creative studios
course businesses
sports organisations
service businesses
campaigns
and founder-led teams
Different industries.
Very similar operational patterns.
One of the biggest misconceptions about systems work is that it’s mainly about automation.
A lot of the time, it’s actually about visibility.
Being able to answer simple questions without stress:
Where does this live?
Who owns this?
What happens next?
Has this been followed up?
Which version is correct?
Can someone else step in if needed?
That kind of clarity creates a surprising amount of breathing room because people stop carrying so much operational information in their heads all the time.
That’s increasingly what I’m interested in through Untangle by helping businesses rely a little less on memory alone.
Reference:
Herbert A. Simon, Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_A._Simon
Untangle is an ongoing exploration of operational clarity, continuity and reducing friction inside businesses.