Why Direction Is Harder Than It Looks

Recent concerns raised about Tasmania's $500 million health technology transformation, Project Bluegum, have brought into focus questions of leadership, governance and project scope. It’s not uncommon for large transformation programs for these questions to be raised and while the circumstances are specific, they reflect a familiar organisational challenge. When numerous stakeholders have legitimate interests, different responsibilities and competing expectations, establishing and maintaining a common direction can become remarkably difficult.

Most organisations recognise the importance of clear leadership. They develop strategies, establish governance arrangements and appoint executives responsible for delivering outcomes. But these structures don't necessarily mean everyone is moving in the same direction or is aligned. The difficulty lies often in reconciling competing priorities across an organisation where almost everyone has very good reasons for pursuing what matters to them.

When everything becomes important

Organisations accumulate priorities for understandable reasons. Customers expect improvements, technology requires modernisation, operational pressures demand attention and regulatory obligations cannot be ignored. New opportunities emerge, markets change and leaders identify areas where the organisation could perform better. Individually, many of these priorities make sense. Collectively, they can become difficult to accommodate.

Each part of an organisation naturally sees its responsibilities differently. Finance may prioritise cost control, technology may focus on replacing ageing systems, while customer-facing teams advocate for better services. None of these perspectives is inherently wrong. The challenge arises when these priorities compete for the same resources, people and attention, as is often the case. Without a clear basis for making choices, decisions can become influenced by factors beyond their contribution to the organisation's objectives. Persuasive executives may secure support for their initiatives, established relationships may help others gain momentum, while less visible but equally important problems struggle to attract attention.

People advocate for what they believe matters. But when individual ambitions accumulate without sufficient consideration of their combined effect, the organisation can find itself pursuing more than it can realistically deliver.

Direction requires difficult choices

There is a long-established view in strategic management that good strategy is as much about what an organisation chooses not to do as what it sets out to achieve. It recognises that resources are finite and that pursuing every worthwhile opportunity can ultimately weaken an organisation's ability to deliver.

The difficulty is putting that thinking into practice. Postponing an initiative may disappoint stakeholders, reducing investment can create problems elsewhere and stopping an established programme can be uncomfortable, particularly when significant resources have already been committed. It is often easier to accommodate another priority than to explain why something worthwhile must wait.

Over time, this can produce an extensive portfolio of initiatives, each supported by a reasonable business case, budget and delivery plan. Individually, they appear justified. Collectively, they may demand more than the organisation can realistically deliver.

Another established perspective is that improving individual parts of an organisation does not necessarily improve its overall performance. Departments may successfully achieve their own objectives while creating competing demands, dependencies and additional complexity for others. Everyone can be making progress without the organisation becoming more effective.

This is what makes providing direction particularly challenging. Leaders need to consider how individual ambitions contribute to the organisation as a whole, recognising that a worthwhile initiative is not automatically the right priority. The real difficulty lies in deciding what deserves attention now, what can wait and what the organisation may need to leave behind.

What the organisation actually prioritises

Organisations often communicate their priorities clearly through strategic plans, executive presentations and performance measures. But the most revealing evidence of their priorities is often found in where they invest their money, allocate their people and direct their attention.

Which initiatives receive the organisation's most capable people? What continues to receive attention when resources become constrained?

An organisation might identify customer experience as its highest priority while directing most of its resources towards internal initiatives with little demonstrated connection to improving customer outcomes. Those investments may be justified, but leadership needs to establish how they contribute to the direction the organisation has chosen.

Priorities are not simply established through strategy. They are continually reinforced, challenged or undermined through everyday decisions.

Getting everyone moving together

Providing direction does not mean eliminating disagreement. Different perspectives are essential to understanding the consequences of organisational choices. What matters is the ability to resolve those differences and translate decisions into consistent action.

When teams encounter competing demands, they should understand which outcomes matter more than others, and why. When new opportunities emerge, leaders should be able to explain what needs to change to accommodate them. And when priorities conflict across departments, the organisation needs a way to resolve those tensions without relying entirely on personal influence.

This is where direction becomes more than a statement of ambition. It provides people with a basis for exercising judgement. Maintaining direction also requires attention. Circumstances change, and priorities sometimes need to change with them. The challenge is remaining responsive without repeatedly disrupting the organisation's ability to deliver what it has already committed to.

Who is providing direction?

Maintaining a common direction requires continuous attention and judgement. As circumstances change and new opportunities emerge, organisations need to reconsider their priorities without losing sight of what they have already committed to achieving.

This is perhaps one of leadership's more demanding responsibilities: balancing competing interests, recognising the organisation's capacity and making thoughtful choices about where its efforts can create the greatest value.

When another worthwhile priority emerges, what are we prepared to stop, postpone or approach differently to make room for it?

Being able to answer that question, and revisiting it as circumstances change, can help organisations maintain a shared direction while remaining responsive to new opportunities.