The modern organization is a masterpiece of illusion: On the surface, everything looks professional, we are more structured, more process-driven, and more 'supported' than at any time in history. Our calendars are full. Our alignment meetings are scheduled. Our engagement surveys are sent.

Yet underneath the dashboard, the engine is stalling.

Productivity is declining. Decision velocity is crashing. Service levels are eroding.

This is not a temporary slump. It is a systemic outcome. We have designed organizations that prioritize comfort over consequence and process over pulse.

We are drowning in support — yet starving for results.

Productivity once had a simple meaning: value created per hour worked. Today, that definition has been hijacked and replaced by the illusion of competence.

For the first time in decades, productivity growth in many advanced economies has stagnated — even as corporate overhead, HR headcount, and internal process complexity have increased. We now have more people managing work than doing it, and more systems measuring effort than enabling outcomes.

That is not progress. It is organizational entropy.

In the modern corporate structure, a full calendar is mistaken for importance. Alignment is mistaken for progress. Consensus is mistaken for leadership.

We have created a professional class that is expert at navigating work — but amateur at doing work.

McKinsey and Gallup data point to the same uncomfortable truth: engagement is low, “quiet quitting” is high, and decision velocity is deteriorating. This is not because people are lazy. It is because they are exhausted by the bureaucracy of their own employers.

When activity becomes the goal, output becomes optional.

Here is the hardest truth to swallow: the very functions designed to enable people are often the ones disabling them.

Over the last decade, the scope and influence of HR and central people systems have expanded dramatically. Yet instead of fueling performance, these systems increasingly function as institutional brakes.

Good intentions are no longer enough. If HR cannot demonstrate a direct, measurable contribution to execution, productivity, and service quality, it has become a cost center — not a strategic function.

Managers have been systematically stripped of authority. Judgment was replaced with templates. Conversations were replaced with tickets. Leadership was replaced with escalation paths.

When a manager cannot make a decision without three approvals, risk has not been reduced — delay has been institutionalized.

Gallup’s research shows that managers account for up to 70% of the variance in team engagement, yet many people systems systematically strip managers of authority. Accountability does not disappear by accident. It is engineered out of the system.

At the same time, modern people systems increasingly optimize for protection rather than performance. We prioritize policy completeness over speed, process compliance over common sense, and fairness-as-sameness over meritocracy.

The result is a silent regression to the mean. High performers are capped by bureaucracy. Low performers are protected by process. The middle stagnates — safely.

And in this environment, career survival is no longer tied to results. It is tied to agreement.

Challenging the process becomes dangerous. Owning a decision becomes risky. Agreeing with the room becomes rewarded.

We call this collaboration. It is not. It is coordinated mediocrity.

True collaboration requires friction. It requires the courage to say, “This isn’t working.” When friction is punished in the name of alignment or culture, organizations do not become united — they become fragile.

So what actually needs to change?

We do not need more initiatives. We do not need more frameworks. And we certainly do not need more “Wellness Wednesdays” to patch burnout caused by broken systems.

We need subtraction.

Restore managerial authority. Stop treating managers like children who need a template to have a conversation. Give them the power to decide, hire, reward, and remove. If they are not capable of this, replace them — but do not shackle them.

And weaponize trust.

Trust is not a soft value. It is an economic driver. Low trust acts like a tax on every decision. High trust is a dividend — it allows organizations to move at the speed of thought.

The companies that win in the next decade will be the ones that dismantle approval layers and let their people run.

The verdict.

A humane workplace and a high-performance workplace are not opposites. But an unchallenged, overly comfortable workplace is the enemy of sustained high performance.

We spent years trying to protect people from pressure. It didn’t just fail — it made organizations weaker.

Pressure is necessary. Friction is necessary. Accountability is necessary.

Organizations that continue to confuse comfort with care will not decline gracefully. They will stall, fragment, and eventually be overtaken by leaner, clearer, more demanding competitors.

The future belongs to organizations that stop managing activity and start demanding impact.

The rest will remain very busy — until they are irrelevant.

Christian Pertl - Follow

Chief Commercial Officer | Luxury Hospitality Executive | Entrepreneur & Investor | Building Experience-Driven Businesses