Walk into almost any leadership meeting, and you’ll hear the same refrain: “We need to do more.” More initiatives. More metrics. More cross-functional projects. More workshops, more check-ins, more communication campaigns. The assumption is simple — if action equals progress, then more action must equal more progress.
But in complex systems, that logic is a trap. Doing more can actually achieve less. In fact, it often makes the system slower, more confused, and less adaptive. This is the action illusion — the belief that piling on activity will move things forward, when in reality it fragments attention, drains energy, and erodes trust.
Leaders don’t fall into the action illusion because they’re careless. They fall into it because action feels tangible. It looks like progress. It signals urgency. In the face of uncertainty, action provides comfort. Yet comfort is not the same as impact. And systems care about impact, not appearances.
Why Organizations Worship Action
Before we explore the costs, let’s understand the appeal. Organizations love action because:
- It’s visible. Action can be announced, scheduled, tracked, and celebrated. Results take time; activity can be shown today.
- It signals control. Leaders fear being seen as passive. More action reassures stakeholders that something is being done.
- It satisfies bias. Humans prefer “doing something” over waiting, even when waiting would yield better results. This is known as action bias.
- It distracts from complexity. Launching initiatives feels easier than wrestling with ambiguous root causes.
The irony? The more an organization relies on action for reassurance, the less likely it is to produce lasting change.
The Costs of the Action Illusion
When action multiplies without coherence, the system begins to suffer. Common consequences include:
1. Fragmentation of Energy
Every new initiative competes for attention, resources, and emotional energy. Instead of compounding, the system scatters. People juggle too many priorities and begin to disengage.
2. Initiative Fatigue
Employees stop believing new programs matter. Each announcement feels like noise. Engagement surveys reflect exhaustion. What was meant to inspire begins to demoralize.
3. Noise Over Signal
With dozens of simultaneous projects, it becomes impossible to distinguish meaningful progress from busywork. Leaders spend more time managing the portfolio of activity than solving real problems.
4. Trust Erosion
When employees see initiatives announced but never sustained, they stop trusting leadership promises. Words and actions decouple, fueling cynicism.
5. System Slowdown
The paradox of the action illusion: more motion actually slows the system down. Bureaucracy grows. Meetings multiply. Decisions stall as leaders wait to see how one initiative interacts with another.
Case Study: The Company with 37 Priorities
A global services firm wanted to accelerate transformation. The leadership team announced 37 “strategic priorities” in a single year — each one well-intentioned, each with its own steering committee, KPIs, and executive sponsor. At first, the energy was high. But within six months, employees were exhausted. Competing messages created confusion. Departments resisted cross-project demands. By the end of the year, less than half the initiatives were active, and not a single one had achieved its intended impact.
The firm eventually brought in systemic coaches, who reframed the approach. Instead of dozens of disconnected priorities, they focused on three systemic shifts: customer journey redesign, frontline empowerment, and decision rights clarity. Within a year, employee engagement rose, duplication fell, and progress accelerated. The lesson was clear: fewer, deeper moves beat endless activity.
How Systems Punish Over-Action
Complex systems don’t reward sheer volume of effort. They reward coherence and adaptation. When leaders push more action without alignment, systems react in predictable ways:
- Defensive routines — People protect themselves from overload by withholding energy.
- Shadow workarounds — Teams quietly ignore initiatives they know won’t last.
- Data distortion — Metrics are gamed to make action appear successful.
- Hidden opportunity costs — Attention to new initiatives displaces the quiet, incremental improvements that often matter most.
In short, the system defends itself against incoherent action — by slowing down or rejecting change altogether.
Systemic Coaching View: Coherence Over Volume
Systemic coaches help leaders see that the key to change is not more action, but coherent action. Coherence means actions align with each other, reinforce the same signals, and match the system’s capacity to absorb. Instead of fragmenting, they compound.
Coherence is built by asking:
- Does this action align with our core purpose?
- Does it reinforce or contradict existing initiatives?
- Do we have the capacity to sustain it long enough for results to appear?
- What unintended signals might this action send?
When leaders prioritize coherence, they shift from chasing activity to cultivating systemic impact.
Spiral Dynamics Lens: Action Across Value Systems
Spiral Dynamics helps us see how different worldviews approach action:
- Blue (order) — Action is duty. Leaders emphasize strict plans and compliance, even when reality shifts.
- Orange (achievement) — Action is hustle. Success is measured in the number of initiatives and visible wins.
- Green (pluralism) — Action is inclusion. Endless meetings and workshops are mistaken for collaboration.
- Yellow (integrative) — Action is coherence. Leaders slow the system down enough to align moves, ensuring compounding impact.
The action illusion thrives in Blue, Orange, and Green — for different reasons. Yellow transcends it by valuing clarity and coherence over volume.
Breaking the Action Illusion: Practices for Leaders
To escape the trap, leaders can adopt practices that privilege clarity over volume:
1. Declare Fewer Priorities
Resist the urge to launch everything at once. Choose three systemic moves and sustain them long enough to matter.
2. Test Before Scaling
Run small experiments instead of massive rollouts. Scale only what works in real conditions.
3. Watch for Unintended Consequences
Every action sends signals. Ask: “What might this initiative inadvertently tell the system?”
4. Create Pause Rituals
Build moments to stop and reflect before adding new initiatives. Pausing is not passivity — it’s design.
5. Align Signals
Ensure that new actions reinforce the same story, rather than competing ones. Alignment multiplies impact.
Questions to Ask Before Acting
Before launching your next initiative, ask:
- What problem are we truly solving — and how do we know?
- Does this action add clarity or clutter?
- What three other actions will this interfere with?
- What’s the smallest version of this we could test?
- If we didn’t do this, what would become possible?
These questions cut through the action illusion and force leaders to choose with intention.
From Action Illusion to Systemic Impact
The paradox of the action illusion is simple: doing more often achieves less. In systems, action is not neutral. Every initiative signals, shifts, and shapes the whole. The more fragmented the signals, the weaker the system becomes. The more coherent the signals, the stronger the system adapts.
Leaders who break the illusion stop measuring progress by the number of programs launched. They measure it by the coherence of moves, the trust built, and the resilience created. Because in the end, the question is not “How much did we do?” but “How much did the system change?”