

How Drift Can Derail an Organization
The Dangers of Complacency and Insular Thinking
Issue 222, July 24, 2025
Could your organization be the next Blockbuster? Imagine this familiar scenario: You are drifting downstream, gently course correcting to avoid the random log or rock, enjoying the scenery and lulled into becoming a passenger, not a steward or captain. There is something so tempting about letting go as the current moves you forward, and you enjoy the ride. You have a goal (the docking point) but are content to surrender control as you drift along. Often in uncharted waters, you are so relaxed that you miss a threat or possible obstruction. You feel confident that you will successfully arrive at your destination under no pressure to exert any additional energy to speed up the journey.
But what if drift is happening to your organization? What if you’re at risk of becoming the next Blockbuster?
Organizational Drift
Drift is a real-life danger when an organization is gradually detached from its set strategic course. According to Empiraa, “This misalignment often occurs so slowly that it can go unnoticed … until significant consequences manifest.” The reasons for drift vary, but they are principally propelled when a company fails to recognize or respond to changes in the marketplace. Common examples include not acknowledging new technologies, shifting customer preferences, challenges with leadership/staff retention, and competitive threats. Some drifting organizations have become complacent or overly reliant on past successes, ignoring the dynamic factors, variables, and signals that move markets, the economy, and systems forward … or destroy them.
In any case, an operating strategy is no longer relevant or effective for the current situation when an organization is drifting. But what is so insidious about drift is that it is often not apparent to leadership or stakeholders, who allow the conditions to continue unchecked until they become so critical that failure is suddenly on the horizon.
In fact, drift often causes once-iconic organizations to lose relevance. Think: Kodak, Toys ‘R’ Us, Polaroid, Blackberry, broadcast TV, Blockbuster, Sears and Kmart. Complacency, comfort, mismanagement, and limited tolerance of risk contribute to drift.
Warning Signs: Are You Already Drifting?
When an organization is drifting, there are some key red flags to put leadership on alert. That is, assuming management pulls itself together enough to notice the incremental changes that, when aggregated, define the demise that drift can accelerate. Take a quick risk assessment: How many of these warning signs do you recognize in your organization?
- Decreasing Performance. The organization is losing market share, demand has declined, and profits are declining in turn.
- Increased Competition. A sudden influx of new competitors or increased pressure from existing ones can easily and adeptly outmaneuver the organization. Or the organization simply cannot adapt to new innovations brought to market by others.
- Operational Inefficiencies. Slowdowns in processes, increased errors, and wasted resources. Process is often the golden ticket to efficient production and meeting market demand, but not when the process becomes so ingrained it is producing what is no longer relevant. Replication breeds drift when it becomes status-quo.
- Employee Dissatisfaction. High employee turnover or low morale ensures that institutional knowledge and a strategic path are walking out the door with those who leave the organization’s workforce.
- Declining Customer Engagement. Less interest and reduced interaction on social media platforms, lower attendance at events, or decreased participation in loyalty programs.
- Stagnant Growth. Consistent yearly sales do not reflect market trends and growth in the overall market category, niche or vertical.
- Mismanagement. Leadership has lost touch with the market, customers, and workforce.
Tally up your responses. Three or more agreements indicate that drift may already be underway.
Responding to Organizational Drift
According to i-nexus, organizational drift occurs in four stages with related operational responses:
- Incremental Changes. Incremental changes are small, gradual shifts that occur within an organization’s internal workings, not the wider external environment. These changes are often made from stakeholder feedback, publicity, or in response to customers or competitors. When organizational drift is in the incremental changes phase, a business can still change its strategy and respond to outside influences.
- Strategic Drift. Shifts are occurring in the wider business environment and small changes are no longer enough to keep on top of these shifts. An organization may struggle to remain competitive, and profitability may decline as a result. Processes and tactics that were once effective fail to produce the necessary results, and yet, for whatever reason, be it complacency or resistance to change, the organization fails to make appropriate changes.
- Flux. The gap between your customers’ needs and an organization’s services or products widens, and they begin to look elsewhere. This is when an organization realizes that serious changes must be made to its strategy. Still, indecision at this point in the process is common, delaying the process of necessary changes even further. The changes needed here are often grand, such as organizational restructuring or investing in new markets or avenues.
- Transformational Change (or Demise). An organization has two options: to embrace the need for transformation and take a leap or stick to its original strategy. Both run the risk of failure; there is no guarantee that transformational changes will pay off, even if they are focused on better aligning your organization with its goals. However, in some ways, refusing to change altogether and hoping things will improve is even riskier. After all, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. If an organization successfully attempts to transform, it may emerge stronger and more competitive. The key is intelligent and creative responses to strategic drift.
What Causes Drift: The Human Factor
The key question leaders need to ask about drift is, why? What enables drift to become a swell that can implode an organization? We have written about hubris, lack of shared purpose, insular thinking, distraction, and poor management among the causes of organizational dysfunction. In terms of drift, we have identified six core human-driven reasons:
- Living in Oblivion. Leadership does not acknowledge market shifts, consumer preference trends, emerging technologies, and new competitors. Leadership thinks it knows best and turns a deaf ear to internal feedback and external information. This cognitive bias creates an echo chamber where confirming comfortable information is welcomed and challenging data is dismissed.
- Bias. Dependence on personal opinion and confirmation bias, as well as short-term bias over long-term sustainability. Failure to recognize the need for change. Inability to be nimble and adaptable. Lack of critical thinking and resistance to change. The psychological comfort of familiar patterns overrides the objective need to adapt.
- Complacency. Relying on past successes that are irrelevant in an evolving marketplace where change is the only constant. Overconfidence and a lack of curiosity. Perceived success becomes the enemy of adaptation, creating a false sense of security in what worked before will continue to work.
- Intelligence Gaps. Poor ability to leverage data and analytics, outdated market research, and a lack of talent to interpret data and transform information into intelligence and strategic vision. The failure to distinguish between information and insight leaves organizations data-rich but wisdom-poor.
- Insularity. Homogenous, collective-thinking culture. The workforce feels stifled, with the lack of a platform to have open communication, dissenting opinions, and pursue innovation. When diverse perspectives are discouraged, the organization loses its ability to see around corners.
- Erosion. Not attending to brand reputation and obsolescence. The gradual degradation of market position happens so slowly that it becomes normalized until a tipping point is reached.
Prescription for Drift: A Strategic Framework
Understanding a problem is the first step to correcting it. Organizational drift unlocks core problems within an organization that have been festering over time. An organization should avoid being overly comfortable. Our dynamically changing matrix of systems (consumer preferences, market shifts, stakeholder pressure, new innovations, etc.) are not stagnant and not acknowledging changes comes at a cost. Although many course corrections are common sense, the fundamental dysfunctions within an organization need to be addressed, painful as they may be.
We have provided a strategic framework that can help to reverse organizational drift:
- Iteration: Systematically review strategic plans to ensure shared purpose and market orientation, reset priorities and realign to emerging market conditions. Schedule quarterly strategy reviews with external market data, not just internal metrics.
- Measure What Matters: Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) for signs of decline; revise the metrics to reflect market shifts. Are you measuring yesterday’s success or tomorrow’s relevance?
- Openminded: Be curious, surround yourself with others who think differently, and study the marketplace and your position in it objectively. Identify three people in your organization who regularly constructively disagree with leadership – are their voices heard?
- Empathy: Encourage open communication and feedback from employees. Create formal channels for dissenting opinions without retribution.
- Preparation: Invest in market research and stay informed about industry trends. Assign someone to be your organization’s “Chief Disruption Officer,” tasked with identifying threats.
- Flow: Don’t be afraid to challenge the status quo and embrace change. When did your organization last kill a marginally profitable legacy program because it was no longer strategically relevant?
- Innovate: Don’t get stuck walking in place; innovate without being additive. Innovation often means subtraction, not addition.
- Connection: Stay connected to all stakeholders and listen to their concerns; improve opportunities to meaningfully engage. When did leadership last have an unscripted conversation with frontline employees?
Building Resilience
Resilient organizations can emerge from drift stronger and more competitive. At 2040 we work with clients to embed flexibility and honest, ongoing assessment of organizational operations to identify and prevent drift. Granted, it’s challenging to stay alert and be aware of all the implications of macro and micro trends, cultural shifts, and their influence on the organization’s meso system.
However, encouraging continuous learning motivates a workforce to be aware of influential shifts and anticipate the future. The wisdom-of-crowds workplace model is essential in today’s complex, multicultural business ecosystems. A diversity of perspectives and expertise provides a multidimensional ability to solve problems. Wargaming the marketplace is strengthened by scenario planning and anticipating the what-ifs that can derail organizational drift.
Honestly, it’s the human factor that can make or break an organization. Drift is symptomatic of bigger problems. Organizational drift is the result of laziness, poor observational skills, insularity, overconfidence, and benign neglect. These are human failures that trigger organizational breakdowns. If you want to prevent drift in the first place, provide a workplace where employees can be on their game and valued.
An Uncomfortable Truth
Here’s what we rarely admit: The most successful organizations are often the most vulnerable to drift. Success breeds comfort, comfort breeds complacency, and complacency breeds irrelevance. The question isn’t whether your organization will drift – it’s whether you’ll recognize it before the current carries you over the falls. That river of change, transformation, and evolution keeps flowing. The key question is whether you’re steering your way along or just along for the ride. Give us a call; we can help you!
The Truth About Transformation: Why Most Change Initiatives Fail (And How Yours Can Succeed)
Why do 70% of organizational transformations fail?
The brutal truth: It’s not about strategy, technology, or resources. Organizations fail because they fundamentally misunderstand what drives change—the human factor.
While leaders obsess over digital tools, process improvements, and operational efficiency, they’re missing the most critical element: the psychological, behavioral, and cultural dynamics that actually determine whether transformation takes hold or crashes and burns.
The 2040 Framework reveals what really works:
- Why your workforce unconsciously sabotages change (and how to prevent it)
- The hidden biases that derail even the best-laid transformation plans
- How to build psychological safety that accelerates rather than impedes progress
- The difference between performative change and transformative change that sticks
This isn’t theory—it’s a battle-tested playbook. We’ve compiled real-world insights from organizations of all sizes, revealing the elements that comprise genuine change. Through provocative case studies, you’ll see exactly how transformations derail—and more importantly, how to ensure yours doesn’t.
What makes this different: While most change management books focus on process and tools, The Truth About Transformation tackles the messy, complex, utterly human reality of organizational change. You’ll discover why honoring, respecting, and acknowledging the human factor isn’t just nice—it’s the difference between transformation and expensive reorganization.
Perfect for: CEOs, change leaders, consultants, and anyone tired of watching transformation initiatives fizzle out despite massive investment.
Now available in paperback—because real transformation requires real understanding.
Ready to stop failing at change? Your organization’s future depends on getting this right.