If No One Looks in the Mirror, Nothing Changes

I’ve been conducting a process review recently. As always, it’s fascinating how every conversation follows the same pattern: Ask someone how the organisation operates, and they’ll tell you exactly what’s wrong - with everyone else’s area. Marketing takes too long to sign off. Finance slows everything down. IT doesn’t understand the business. HR gets in the way. Leadership lacks focus.

But when we get to their function, their processes, their team, and their role, the tone shifts. Suddenly everything is “fine.” A few small tweaks, perhaps, but nothing major. The real problems are always somewhere else.

This isn’t unique to any one organisation. It’s universal. People are far more comfortable diagnosing others than examining themselves. And the more I encounter it, the more I realise how revealing it is about culture, leadership, and accountability.

The blind spot of familiarity

The first reason is simple: people stop noticing the flaws in their own environment. Processes that once felt clunky become normalised. Shortcuts turn into standard practice. Workarounds fossilise into “the way we do things.”

When you live with something every day, its inefficiencies blur into the background. Like a squeaky door you no longer hear, internal dysfunction becomes white noise.

That’s why external reviews or even a simple change of perspective can be so powerful. They restore visibility to the things we’ve learned to ignore.

The ego effect

There’s also a psychological dimension. It takes confidence and safety to admit that your own processes are inefficient, outdated, or confusing. Many workplaces still equate self-critique with failure, rather than maturity.

So people redirect scrutiny elsewhere. They highlight issues beyond their control to demonstrate awareness, intelligence, or engagement, but keep their own territory off-limits.

It’s not necessarily malicious. It’s a form of self-protection, but it blocks learning and collaboration. In environments where “mistakes” are punished or mocked, introspection becomes a liability.

The currency of commentary

Critiquing others can also be a way to earn social capital. It signals involvement and influence: I see what’s wrong here, and I have opinions.

The danger is that it becomes performance rather than progress. When everyone’s analysing everyone else, improvement becomes a spectator sport. People spend more energy observing the system than fixing their own part of it.

In membership organisations especially, where expertise and representation are prized, this tendency can become endemic. Everyone’s voice matters, but when every voice is focused outward, the collective loses its ability to look inward.

Tunnel vision and the illusion of competence

Most people understand their tasks, but not always the system. They’re experts in execution, not in context. They can describe what they do, but not always how it connects to the organisation’s purpose, or where the handoffs fail.

That’s why process reviews are often full of surprises. Someone confidently explains that their bit works perfectly, until you trace it one step upstream or downstream and find the cracks. It’s not ignorance, it’s isolation. Without a shared map of how the business fits together, each team assumes their own bit is fine, because it seems to be working from where they sit.

Leadership’s invisible hand

This pattern doesn’t appear in a vacuum. It reflects what leadership rewards and models. If leaders celebrate busyness, firefighting, and short-term delivery, that’s what people will focus on. Reflection, feedback, and self-examination will feel like distractions from “real work.”

If leaders are defensive or dismissive when challenged, staff will quickly learn to look outward instead of inward. Why risk honesty when you can safely critique someone else’s department?

Conversely, when leaders demonstrate curiosity, asking “what could we do better?” rather than “who’s at fault?”, people begin to mirror that behaviour, and self-assessment becomes a strength, not a threat.

Building a culture of self-diagnosis

The healthiest organisations I’ve worked with have a distinctive habit: they start with themselves. Teams ask, “What are we contributing to the problem?” before pointing fingers.

They treat external observations as mirrors, not spotlights, and opportunities to see what others see, and to adjust accordingly. This doesn’t happen by accident. It takes three things:

1. Psychological safety. People must know they can admit issues without repercussion. That honesty will be met with curiosity, not blame.

   
   

2. System visibility. Everyone needs to see how their part connects to others, i.e., the upstream and downstream impact. Process maps and cross-functional workshops can help here.

   
   

3. Leadership modelling. If senior figures are open about their own blind spots, the rest of the organisation will follow. Self-critique becomes a cultural norm.

The consultant’s paradox

As an external facilitator, I find this dynamic both frustrating and fascinating. The very reason I’m brought in, to help an organisation see itself clearly, is the same reason it sometimes resists the mirror. It’s rarely the processes themselves that block progress. It’s the stories people tell about them. “We’re fine.” “That’s not really our issue.” “We’ve always done it that way.” The hardest part of process improvement isn’t designing the new flowchart. It’s helping people rediscover curiosity about their own work.

If you ever find yourself in a process review, try a small experiment: before describing what’s wrong with everyone else, ask, what might we be missing in our own house?

It’s uncomfortable, yes, but it’s also where genuine improvement starts. The moment an organisation learns to look in the mirror and not just out the window is the moment it starts to grow up.