Rigid teams often reveal themselves through repeated phrases. These may be signals that threat, hierarchy, habit, or fear has replaced inquiry. And remember: a team can be successful but already in the process of becoming rigid.
Gulf-based logistics firm Meridian had dominated regional freight for a decade. Then fuel costs spiked, a new competitor launched, and margins began to erode. When the pressure hit, the CEO cancelled the monthly “open-floor” sessions, saying, “We need execution, not debate.”
Power became more centralized. Decisions were increasingly routed through the COO. By the time proposals reached him, they’d been optimized for approval, not accuracy. Meridian’s success locked in the old formula. Its reputation was built on overnight guarantees, and no one asked whether customers still prized speed over cost – even as the data quietly suggested they didn’t.
The leadership team had worked together for eight years. They moved fast and congratulated themselves on their “alignment,” but what they called alignment was actually a shared blind spot: they all assumed enterprise clients were the future, when the small- and medium-sized business sector was the growing segment.
Meridian muddled through, but a team that had once been highly creative became efficient at repeating itself – even as a smaller, hungrier competitor took a meaningful slice of the market. In retrospect, everyone agreed that they’d seen it coming.
It’s not always obvious to spot when your team has lost its mojo. The slides still look polished, the strategy is still littered with impressive action verbs (accelerate, transform, leverage, optimize), but the energy is gone. People stop challenging each other, the same few voices dominate, and the team becomes efficient at repeating itself. This is what rigidity looks like. A rigid team is not necessarily lazy, stupid, or badly intentioned. The problem is that it keeps applying yesterday’s logic to today’s problems.
When teams feel under threat, they tend to become less open, not more.
There are six main causes:
When teams feel under threat, they tend to become less open, not more. The result is restricted information, centralized control, and falling back on familiar routines.
Real-world example: On January 28, 1986, Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members. Engineers had raised serious concerns about the O-rings in cold temperatures the night before launch. But with launch delays creating institutional pressure, NASA officials downplayed the warnings. The threat of further schedule slippage triggered exactly the wrong response: less openness, not more.
Ironically, teams often become rigid not because they failed, but because they succeeded: success teaches, but it also seduces. The winning formula becomes a routine, the routine becomes an identity, and eventually, the identity becomes a prison.
Real-world example: Kodak was the world leader in camera technology and seemed unbeatable. This all changed once digital cameras arrived. The strangest part is that Kodak had actually developed the world’s first digital camera but, instead of bringing it to market, shelved it to protect its lucrative film-processing business. Its greatest strength – deep expertise in film – became the “prison” that prevented it from seeing what was coming.
When people fear embarrassment, punishment, or being labelled “negative,” they stop speaking up. Instead, the meeting becomes a theatre production called Alignment. Everyone performs agreement as nobody wants to be seen as difficult. The team has achieved something very dangerous: false consensus. But a psychologically safe team is not a comfortable team – it’s a candid one.
Real-world example: Behind the scenes, Enron hid massive debts and losses through complex accounting loopholes, and a culture of excessive risk-taking and absence of internal checks and balances led the company into increasingly dubious financial practices. Those who did raise concerns were marginalized or sidelined. The meeting rooms were full of performed alignment and nobody wanted to be the difficult person.
Teams need shared mental models because they help people coordinate. They create speed and allow us to finish each other’s sentences. That’s useful until everyone is finishing the wrong sentence. When a team shares the same inaccurate assumptions, alignment becomes a trap. The team is united, but around a distorted picture of reality. This is why some teams can be both harmonious and wrong. They all agree, but on what? The danger is not disagreement but premature agreement.
Real-world example: Once known as the “Flying Bank” due to its financial stability, the downfall of Swissair was rooted in collective overconfidence and a failure to adapt to changing market conditions. Management saw themselves as the guardians of Swiss quality and prestige, and dismissed the threat posed by low-cost carriers. The entire leadership team shared the same flawed picture of reality, and their harmony made it worse, not better.
Under pressure, teams often defer to the most senior or dominant person. This is understandable because hierarchy reduces ambiguity. Someone takes charge and decisions move faster – but at a cost. The more power concentrates, the less information may travel.
Real-world example: In the mid-2000s, middle managers at Nokia were so afraid of delivering bad news to senior leaders that they systematically filtered information upward. Engineers and product teams knew the software architecture was falling behind Apple and Android, but the senior team received a beautifully curated version of reality – right up until the moment that the market shifted beneath them.
When time pressure becomes excessive, experimentation is often the first casualty. Teams skip reflection, reuse last year’s template, choose the familiar vendor, and ask the same people. They hold the same meeting with the same agenda – and, astonishingly, get the same result.
Real-world example: When Netflix came knocking in 2000 offering to sell for $50m, Blockbuster’s leadership, under pressure to defend quarterly earnings and a sprawling store network, declined. There was no room for the experiment. They were too busy optimizing the existing model to test a new one. The “we don’t have time for that right now” mindset cost them everything.
The good news is that rigidity is not a personality trait, but a pattern – and patterns can be broken. Here are six practical moves.
Explicitly invite challenge by asking:
Note:
As a leader, you have to mean it. If you ask to be challenged, then punish the first person who dissents, and the team learns very quickly.
When someone raises a concern, do not say, “Yes, but…” Instead, say, “Tell me more.” This one sentence can change the room.
First generate explanations, then choose a response. For example, ask:
Note:
Rigid teams jump too quickly from problem to solution.
The meeting usually starts with, “What should we do?” A better opening question would be, “What’s actually going on?”
This approach slows the team down to speed up learning.
Make dissent a role. In each meeting, appoint one person to ask:
Note:
Continue to invite genuine dissent from everyone. If the same person always challenges the team, that person becomes “the difficult one,” but when the challenge rotates, it becomes part of the process.
The question regarding strategy sounds dramatic, but it forces the team to imagine alternatives before reality forces them to do so.
Don’t let assumptions live only in people’s heads. Put them on a page, a whiteboard, or a shared document. Create a simple map with five columns:
Note:
Many teams discover that what they thought was a fact is actually an assumption. For example:
When your team is stuck, ask:
Note:
You are not looking to run the perfect test – just the smallest useful one.
Experiments shift the team from defending opinions to learning from evidence.
Experiments also reduce ego. It’s less threatening to say, “The experiment did not work” than “My brilliant idea failed in public.”
After important events, ask four questions:
Success requires analysis to prevent it from becoming superstition. Ask:
Note:
The last question is crucial.
Many teams review without learning.
After-action reviews help convert experience into adaptation.
Teams regain their mojo when they feel safe to speak up, happy to examine their assumptions, and sufficiently humble to test rather than defend their usual way of working.
Teams regain their mojo when they feel safe to speak up, happy to examine their assumptions, and sufficiently humble to test rather than defend their usual way of working. All teams get stuck. The challenge is to become a team that notices sooner, speaks more honestly, experiments faster, and learns its way out.
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