Organizational Inertia: Why Change Is So Hard?

I recently watched Criminal Defense Private School (《刑辩私塾》) and Innocent Defense (《无罪辩护》). In them I learned about a case that left a deep impression on me.

Case summary in one sentence – The director of the Judicial Bureau of Fuqing, a city under Fuzhou, was targeted with an anonymous tip (apparently from a rival in the same position) during a critical period of job rotation. The initial accusation was that he accepted bribes from a contractor; after a lengthy investigation found nothing, the charge was switched to “misappropriation of state assets.” The probe then shifted to tax evasion, family‑planning violations, and a host of other issues—none of which yielded any evidence. Finally, the prosecution charged him with embezzlement and illegal appropriation of assets. What were those crimes based on? Merely because the director had been translating documents for extra pay after work (a side note: this happened in the 1990s, when few people could handle multilingual translation, and all levels of leadership knew about his translation work).

After a first‑instance trial that sentenced him to 11 years, a second‑instance appeal, and various other proceedings, the director was finally acquitted 13 years later.

The absurdity of this case needs no further elaboration; you can read the full article by the director’s defense lawyer, Zhu Mingyong (朱明勇)—who is also the author of the two books I mentioned above.

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What struck me most

What moved me was how, within a system, everyone gets swept along in the same direction.

I’ll quote lawyer Zhu directly:

“When I reflect on this case, I feel utterly helpless. As the General Secretary said, many cases don’t require extensive legal expertise; a clear conscience can discern right from wrong. Yet some cases are handled in a way that blurs the line between right and wrong. Every profession needs its own professional conscience. If you have none, how can you do your job well?

Indeed, for a case where the facts are clear, it’s often a bunch of bureaucrats pretending to know what they’re doing, concocting melodramatic plot twists. Some things are obvious at a glance, but they insist on endless discussion, and the more they tangle, the more they become trapped in an infinite loop of circular reasoning.”

Why does this resonate with me? Because I have two real work experiences that echo the same dynamics.

(I’m really trying to condense this, but it’s hard to capture in a single sentence…)

First experience

In a large product and operations team, my boss was parachuted in as the head of the product team and merged the existing product team with his own. In reality, he never broke the longstanding product‑operations alliance; he became a titular product leader while being sidelined by the original product and operations heads. Disagreements over product proposals kept escalating, and eventually he left the company. During that period I received no assignments and hovered on the fringe of the team. I appealed repeatedly to my boss’s boss for help; he had no solutions either, only soothing words and a suggestion to wait patiently for any change.

Second experience

Because of a complicated history, two teammates in my product group were both under‑performing and extremely difficult to collaborate with. They were responsible for the most basic platform functions, and as a business stakeholder I inevitably had to interact with them, leading to a series of bizarre situations—​for example, a 1½‑hour meeting with the whole team and the boss just to discuss how to divide work and submit a request. Yet in the short term nothing changed. The inertia of the organization made any transformation feel impossible.

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My reflections

1. Individual power can’t overturn systemic inertia. If even the boss is powerless, ordinary employees are even less able to turn things around.
2. Everyone knows what the problem is, but no one dares to make a decision that carries responsibility. In the second scenario, one person’s poor performance crippled the team, but firing them is hard because the boss would bear the blame. So the safer route is to handle issues case‑by‑case. The most painful part isn’t the boss; it’s us, the rank‑and‑file workers. Their pain is just pain, and the boss remains indifferent, lacking the incentive to take the risk of change.
3. Don’t demand too much from others. During the first experience I went through several interviews. Some interviewers asked me things like, “Are you not good under pressure?” or “What have you done to solve this problem?” I wanted to ask them, “If my senior boss can’t solve the problem, how could I? If I, a regular employee, could fix it, would I even need to interview for this position? And if you think I’m weak under pressure, why not try the role yourself first?”

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In closing

Friends, before you judge others, remember you haven’t walked in their shoes. Don’t rush to advise kindness, and certainly don’t feel entitled to evaluate or demand from others.

Also, look beyond your immediate environment. Just because something hasn’t happened to you doesn’t mean it can’t happen elsewhere.

Be strict with yourself, lenient with others. Really.

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Originally written by Estela Young and published in Chinese on 一只产品汪的自白. Translated and edited for DriftSeas with permission.