Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences:

Businesses often ask for initiative, accountability and adaptability without examining whether their systems actually allow those behaviours to develop. Before deciding that people need to change, it may be worth asking what the organization has been teaching them to do.

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I heard this line in The Gentlemen: “People either survive in the jungle or exist in the zoo.”

Organizations often say they want people who take initiative, exercise judgement, adapt quickly, solve problems, challenge assumptions and take responsibility for results.

But what kind of environment have they created for those people?

In the jungle, survival depends on paying attention.

Conditions change. Resources are not guaranteed. You have to read what is happening, make decisions and adapt accordingly.

The zoo is different.

Much of the environment has already been arranged. Boundaries are established…movement is restricted…resources are provided and behaviour generally becomes shaped by the conditions of the enclosure.

Neither image maps perfectly onto an organization, of course. But the contrast raises a useful question about the relationship between the behaviour businesses say they want and the conditions they create.

• A company may say it wants employees to take ownership, while requiring several layers of approval before they can act.
• It may ask people to innovate, while treating unsuccessful experiments as evidence of poor performance.
• It may want managers to think strategically, while giving them access only to the information necessary for their immediate function.
• It may complain that employees wait for instructions, after years of rewarding people for following instructions precisely.

People learn from the environment.

They learn which decisions are really theirs to make. They learn how much discretion is genuinely permitted. They learn whether questioning something is welcomed or inconvenient. They learn what happens when an initiative succeeds and, perhaps more importantly, what happens when one does not.

Then the organization encounters a problem and concludes that it needs more proactive people, stronger managers, greater accountability or a different culture.

Perhaps…but before deciding that the behaviour needs to be fixed, it may be worth examining what has been producing it.

There is another side to this worth considering as well.

Removing the enclosure does not automatically create capable, empowered people. Organizations can provide too little clarity, structure, information or support and describe the result as autonomy. Asking someone to operate independently without the authority, resources or understanding required to do so is not empowerment.

The issue, then, is not whether the jungle is better than the zoo. The real issue is alignment.

If the business needs judgement, adaptability and initiative, do its systems give people sufficient room to exercise them?

If consistency and control are critical, are the necessary boundaries clear?

And if the organization says it wants one kind of behaviour while its structures, incentives and leadership practices continually reinforce another, which one should we reasonably expect people to follow?

Before deciding that you have a people problem, examine the environment in which those people have learned how to operate.

Strategic Reflection Prompt

Think about one behaviour your organization currently wants more of: initiative, accountability, innovation, collaboration, strategic thinking, adaptability or something else.

Now examine the environment around it.

What authority do people actually have? What information can they access? What requires approval? What happens when someone gets something wrong? What behaviour is rewarded? What behaviour carries risk?

Then ask:

Is the environment we have created helping people behave in the way the business now needs, or have we created conditions that teach them to do something else?

About Giselle

Most costly decisions begin with a wrong read of the situation.

I’m Giselle Hudson — The Pre-Fixer. I help leaders see the real problem before they act, in my writing and in my work. I don’t fix; I pre-fix. Most advisers jump to solutions before they’ve found the real problem. I find it first — the part that isn’t fully visible yet. Once we see that clearly, everything else falls into place, and confident, right action can follow.

Through my daily Strategic Alignment Journal, I explore leadership, decision-making, and the patterns that shape organizations — helping leaders make sense of complexity before they commit significant time and money to the wrong thing.

What’s the one thing about your business that frustrates you most — the thing that, despite your best efforts, you can’t seem to resolve?