Why Your Org Feels Stressed (and What to Do About It)
This is Part 3 in a series on systems thinking and stress. In Part 1, we explored individual stress systems. In Part 2, we zoomed out to team dynamics. Here, we take a further step back to examine the organization as a whole—and how to redesign it to support sustainable, resilient performance.
Culture Sets the Mood—Structure Sets the Rules
Ask most executives how they’re improving wellbeing, and you’ll hear about culture: offsites, meditation apps, “no meeting Fridays.” These gestures have value—but they don’t change the structural dynamics that generate stress in the first place.
It’s not perks or benefits—it’s the day-in, day-out structures and processes that determine whether people thrive or burn out.
Your Org Is a System. It’s Producing Exactly What It’s Designed To.
If people across your company are overwhelmed, confused, burned out, or disconnected—it’s not a coincidence. It’s a pattern.
And in systems thinking, patterns point to loops.
🔁 Cycle of Sub-Optimization
One of the most invisible—and destructive—loops in modern organizations is sub-optimization. This is when parts of a system succeed at the expense of the whole.
The result? The organization moves fast—but in opposite directions.
From a stress perspective, it’s brutal. Employees don’t burn out because they don’t care.
They burn out as they clash with their cross-functional peers, trying to reconcile incoherent priorities and unaligned incentives.
A Cohesive System Needs a Cohesive Purpose
Sub-optimization thrives when teams lose sight of the bigger picture. The antidote isn’t more meetings or tighter metrics—it’s purpose.
Not posters or platitudes, but a real, operationally embedded sense of what the organization exists to do—and how each function contributes to it.
When purpose is clear:
Priorities align across teams
Incentives reinforce collaboration, not competition
Energy flows toward shared outcomes
Stress levels drop—not because work is easier, but because it’s aligned and makes sense
This kind of clarity doesn’t happen by accident. It takes strategic design.
Leverage Points: Where Systemic Change Begins
The beauty of system redesign is that there are countless leverage points once you’ve identified where you are and where you want to go.
Let’s explore a few of the highest-impact leverage points for a sub-optimized organization, to more effectively manage stress within the organizational system.
🔧 Dismantle the paradigm
What old mindsets - structures, rules, feedback delays - are getting in the way?
For example, a legacy rule like "every decision must route through senior leadership" might sound safe—but it crushes speed and ownership.
Proactively identify what’s not working or what patterns of behavior are in direct opposition to the purpose.
Reinvent collaboration norms in alignment with your goals. Voice these new expectations and celebrate them loudly.
Want to be cutting-edge and innovative? Break down unnecessary bureaucracy.
Want to provide white glove customer service? Help internal employees (like HR, Finance, etc.) understand that serving their colleagues is serving the customer.
🔧 Pave the way for self-organization
Every system needs built-in resilience. As Donella Meadows says, “A system that can evolve can survive almost any change, by changing itself.”
By empowering employees across the organization to self-organize in support of a clear vision, you allow for game-time decisions and innovations.
This means building a psychologically safe environment where experimentation and diversity of thought are celebrated.
🔧 Reduce friction between individuals and their work
Let’s not ignore the practical barriers that often go unspoken—but shape everything.
This is worth a deep dive at your organization: where is the friction that makes it difficult for employees to come in fresh, alert, and ready to build something incredible?
Is it unaffordable or unreliable child care? Insufficient parental leave? Lack of time to exercise or prepare nutritious meals?
Are they sandwiched between caregiving responsibilities, busy carting dependents to appointments, or feeling like they can’t carve out time for deeply held values?
Explore that. Address that. And you’ll be amazed at the space you create.
Try This: Audit Your Organizational Stress Loops
Before jumping to fixes, invite your leadership team into a reflective exercise. Ask...
Where do we consistently see signs of stress across departments?
What loops—communication, incentives, feedback—might be reinforcing those stressors?
Where might sub-optimization be occurring?
What’s the actual purpose of our organization—and how visible is that in daily decisions?
What structural changes (not cultural gestures) could reduce friction and restore alignment?
System Redesign Is a Practice, Not a Project
This isn’t about launching a new initiative or writing a clever vision statement. It’s about building an ongoing muscle—a system-level sensitivity to misalignment, incoherence, and friction. And a willingness to recalibrate.
Your company is a living system. Every process, tool, meeting, and goal either contributes to resilience—or erodes it.
You can’t manage what you can’t see. And you can’t fix what you haven’t named.
Stress isn’t a vibe issue. It’s a design issue.
Let’s design something better.
Foster Insights helps organizations redesign their systems to reduce friction, reinforce clarity, and support sustainable performance at scale. Want to spark real change? Let’s talk.