The Geese in the Roof

Some leaders enter an organisation expecting to make a measured contribution, only to find themselves confronting deeply embedded inertia. Executive coaching can help them decide where to apply their energy, what to leave behind and when not to carry the system alone.

The question beneath the problem

There is a particular kind of leadership challenge that is rarely described in a position description.

An experienced executive joins an organisation in good faith. Perhaps they have deliberately chosen a less demanding role after years of leading at pace. Perhaps they want to bring order, professionalise systems or build a stronger operating model. They expect to contribute, mentor others and leave the business in better shape than they found it.

Then they discover that basic ownership is unclear. Important decisions drift for months or years. Job descriptions bear little resemblance to the work people actually do. Leaders spend long hours dealing with urgent operational matters but create little room for strategic thought. Problems are raised repeatedly, yet nobody seems to own their resolution.

The executive sees what needs to change. The harder question is whether they should be the person to make it change.

This is where executive coaching can offer something more useful than encouragement. It can help a leader choose a sustainable role in a system that may be resisting the very renewal it needs.

Geese in the roof

One executive described the culture of a stalled organisation with a striking image: it was like having geese in the roof. People were told to fly, but they were stuck.

The image captures an uncomfortable truth about organisational performance. People can be held accountable for outcomes while lacking the authority, resources, support or decision-making forums required to achieve them.

A strategically important project remains unfinished because no one has been given clear accountability. An employee works around a broken tool because previous requests have gone nowhere. A leader absorbs pressure for a complex problem, but is offered neither the time nor the cross-functional support to solve it properly.

Over time, people learn not to ask. They reduce their ambition to what the system will tolerate. They protect themselves by becoming busy rather than effective.

This is not simply a productivity problem. It is a culture and governance problem. When small, obvious issues have no owner, they are signals of what may happen to larger matters of safety, ethics, risk, customer impact and strategy. A business can look active while becoming less capable of acting.

The change agent’s dilemma

For a natural change agent, this environment is intensely frustrating. Their instinct is to diagnose the problem, clarify roles, redesign processes, mobilise people and keep pushing until the work is done. That instinct has often served them well throughout their career.

But persistence can become a trap when an organisation has not authorised change or when senior leaders will not make the decisions that change requires. The executive begins to carry work that belongs to the system. They compensate for weak ownership, absorb the emotional cost of unresolved issues and become the person who repeatedly escalates what others will not confront.

The personal question eventually becomes unavoidable: Do I still have the energy to fight this?

This is not a question about resilience alone. It is a question about judgement. A leader may be fully capable and deeply committed, yet still need to decide whether the way they are using their energy is sustainable, purposeful and aligned with their values.

Executive coaching provides a confidential space to make that distinction. It helps the leader move from an undifferentiated sense of frustration to a clearer view of what is theirs to influence, what requires sponsorship from others and what must be accepted as a choice made by the organisation.

Coaching does not make the coach the strategist

When an executive faces a stuck system, the coach’s job is not to provide a battle plan or confirm every diagnosis. Nor is it to turn the executive into a more skilful political operator at the expense of their values.

The work begins with careful reflection. What is the leader seeing? What evidence supports it? What patterns are present across people, processes and decisions? Where are they perhaps moving too quickly into solution mode? Which concerns are immediate matters of professional standard or safety, and which are longer-term issues of organisational capability?

That reflection matters because strong leaders can be right about the existence of a problem and still be ineffective in how they bring it forward.

They may present a sophisticated solution before others acknowledge the problem. They may take on work that should remain with the accountable executive. Or they may become so exhausted by resistance that they lose the curiosity, patience and relational credibility needed to build a coalition.

Coaching creates enough distance for a leader to respond rather than react. It supports them to ask not only, What needs to change?, but also, What is the change I am genuinely willing and able to lead?

From heroic effort to a bounded contribution

A productive coaching agenda usually turns broad frustration into a limited, meaningful contribution. Rather than trying to repair the entire culture, the executive may identify three or four outcomes that are both material and achievable within their remit.

They might establish a clear owner for a neglected operational risk. They might implement a process that links systems, roles and decision rights. They might create a regular forum where complex strategic decisions are properly debated rather than buried beneath operational reporting. They might support a safe-workplace initiative by setting and modelling an unequivocal professional standard.

The goal is not to make the executive less ambitious. It is to stop ambition becoming a substitute for organisational accountability.

A well-bounded contribution is more likely to endure. It turns the executive’s value into processes, capabilities and leadership habits that remain after they leave, rather than a series of personal rescues that collapse when their attention moves elsewhere. It also gives the leader a credible way to measure progress: not by how hard they have worked, but by whether the system now works more reliably without them.

Choosing contribution over combat

The deepest value of executive coaching in a stuck organisation is not that it makes difficult work easy. It helps a leader choose how to engage with difficulty without losing themselves to it.

The change agent does not have to become a permanent combatant. They can define the professional standards they will uphold, decide where their influence is strongest, build a contribution that outlasts them and recognise when the organisation must choose its own future.

Sometimes the most powerful question is not, How can I force this organisation to change? It is, What is the most valuable change I can help make—without becoming responsible for everything it refuses to own?