Framed
Nobody would leave a frame like this empty at home. The gilt edges, the carved wood, all of it chosen for a particular picture, and an empty frame on your own wall is something you’d notice every single day until you fixed it. The absence would bother you. You’d feel it every time you walked past.
Organisations are full of empty frames, and almost nobody seems bothered by them. A job title that nobody has properly defined. A strategy document with structure and headings but no real substance underneath. A process built and rolled out before anyone decided exactly what it was meant to achieve. These are frames waiting for a picture that may never arrive, and somehow that’s tolerated in a way it never would be at home.
The difference isn’t that people care less at work. It’s that the discomfort gets diluted. An empty frame in your living room is yours alone to notice and yours alone to fix. An empty role or a hollow strategy belongs to everyone and no one simultaneously, which means the responsibility for filling it disappears into the gap between people, and nobody quite owns the job of noticing.
That distinction matters, because it means most organisations are full of frames nobody chose to leave empty, yet nobody has stepped forward to fill.
What empty frame have you walked past so often that you’ve stopped noticing it’s there?