Seeing Friction Clearly
A familiar meeting
Does this sound familiar?
You sit through the meeting politely. Everyone does. The presentations are well prepared. The tone is constructive. Slides show timelines, dependencies, and confidence. People speak carefully, using the language of reassurance or (even worse) hope: projects are “on track”, risks are “manageable”, some key permissions are missing but “hopefully they will get back to us soon.” No one is overtly misleading or acting in bad faith. And yet, as you leave the room, you are convinced: you cannot rely on what you just heard.
Experience, too often painful, has taught you to recognise this moment. It is the moment when everything sounds reasonable, but nothing feels dependable. You already know that much of what was presented simply will not happen as described, and you will be left managing the accumulation of small breakdowns that no one has yet named: the friction that will wear the project down.
Experienced leaders learn to see friction (and work around it)
Through our work with clients, we invariably see that the most effective senior leaders develop extraordinarily sharp sensitivities to these moments. They learn to read between the lines and listen beyond the words being said, tuning in to the mood of the people around them. They have a sixth sense for where coordination is likely to fail long before it does.
Over time, these leaders become adept at working around friction. They anticipate where decisions will stall and quietly bypass those routes. They know which dependencies are unreliable and build contingencies around them. They know the pathways that make sense in principle but will not work in practice, and exclude those wherever they can. These are skilful adaptations that keep projects moving. But there is a cost.
When managers repeatedly work around friction rather than address it, the organisation never learns, and workarounds harden into habits. Projects become reliant on individual vigilance to be effective rather than shared capability. What once felt like pragmatism slowly becomes another source of friction itself. The paradox is: the very practices that allow experienced managers to cope in the short term often make progress harder in the long term.
From coping with friction to removing it
What we find, again and again, is that friction persists because people lack a shared practice to observe it, name it, and talk about it. In that vacuum, people fill the space with their own explanations, assumptions, and theories – the diversity and imagination of which should never be underestimated! One sees it as poor planning; another a lack of accountability; another a culture problem; and still more develop dark conspiracy theories of betrayal and dark dealings. As these assessments remain isolated over time, they become entrenched.
What changes things is creating a space for people to name what they are experiencing without blame or defensiveness. The first time round, preparing for that practice takes a lot of work, and early experiments will feel clunky. But over time, iterations of this move friction moves from being a personal burden to a shared problem. From there, we work with teams to develop concrete practices (not theoretical frameworks, but habits of coordination) that reduce friction at its source and open up new possibilities for delivery.
Four Common Frictions That Stall Progress, and the Interventions That Remove Them
1. Commitments that sound reasonable but cannot be relied upon
What it looks like
Plans are presented confidently, yet dates slip and scope quietly shifts. Actions are “owned” in name but not in practice. When pressed, people explain why delivery was harder than expected rather than why the commitment was never solid to begin with.
Why it creates friction
Downstream work is planned on the assumption that these commitments will hold. When they don’t, coordination breaks down, trust erodes, and effort is wasted re-planning.
Intervention: improving the quality of commitments
We work with teams to change how commitments are made, not how they are tracked. In meetings, we slow the moment of commitment down and insist on clarity: What exactly will be delivered?, By when?, What assumptions does this rely on?, What could realistically prevent delivery? Leaders are coached to challenge commitments that sound optimistic rather than dependable. Over time, teams stop making promises they cannot keep and start making promises others can plan around.
2. Polite alignment masking unspoken assessments
What it looks like
Meetings are calm and constructive. People agree quickly. Later, decisions unravel. Resistance shows up indirectly through delays, reinterpretation, or quiet non-compliance. The real concerns were never voiced.
Why it creates friction
Unspoken assessments do not disappear. They resurface later in more damaging forms, when change is harder and more expensive.
Intervention: sharing assessments through targeted 1:1 coaching
Rather than pushing people to immediately “be more open” in group settings, we work one-to-one with key stakeholders to prepare them to make and receive assessments. In these conversations, we coach people to: articulate the assessments they are holding but not sharing, understand the impact of those assessments remaining unspoken, prepare to express and receive them constructively, without blame. We then schedule a highly structured meeting designed to surface assessments that would otherwise remain unspoken. Participants arrive prepared to articulate what matters to them (and to listen carefully to what matters to others) in service of a stronger outcome. This shifts the team from quietly holding private judgments to collectively taking informed action.
3. Decisions that spin instead of resolve
What it looks like
The same issues return to the agenda week after week. More analysis is requested. More perspectives are invited. The decision never quite lands.
Why it creates friction
While decisions spin, work stalls. People hedge, delay, and protect themselves. Momentum drains from the system, and the collective mood is damaged.
Intervention: coming to resolution deliberately
We introduce explicit practices to distinguish discussion from decision. Leaders are trained to recognise when a topic has reached the point where a decision is required and to act accordingly. This includes: identifying who must be present for a decision to be made, setting clear decision deadlines, convening short, focused resolution meetings, making a call with imperfect information when waiting carries greater risk. These practices replace endless discussion with forward motion.
4. A deteriorating mood that quietly undermines delivery
What it looks like
Over time, the emotional climate of the project shifts. Energy drains from meetings. People become cautious. Problems are raised without proposals. Conversations narrow to compliance rather than possibility. You notice that even capable, committed people are beginning to act defensively or conservatively.
Why it creates friction
Mood shapes what people believe is possible. A team operating in resignation, irritation, or guardedness will struggle to make bold commitments, surface concerns, or resolve issues decisively. Work becomes more difficult because the mood makes action feel risky.
Intervention: introducing the language of mood and building awareness
We work with teams to develop a shared language for mood as a practical leadership tool. Leaders and teams are invited to: observe the prevailing mood of the project, reflect on how that mood is influencing behaviour and decision-making, distinguish between the mood they are in and the mood required for the work ahead. Through simple practices naming mood in meetings, checking it before key decisions, and resetting it deliberately, teams regain energy and agency. Mood shifts from an invisible force working against delivery into something the team can consciously shape.
Seeing friction is the first move. Acting on it is the work.
Friction is rarely dramatic. It doesn’t announce itself as failure. It shows up as slippage, hesitation, polite agreement, spinning decisions, and a gradual draining of energy. Experienced leaders sense it early and work around it just to keep things moving.
But organisations don’t fail because people aren’t smart or committed enough. They fail because friction is tolerated, normalised, and left unnamed until it becomes structural. The shift is not about better reporting, more dashboards, or stronger enforcement. It’s about building shared practices that allow teams to see friction clearly, talk about it without blame, and remove it at the source. When that happens, reliability improves, decisions land, energy returns, and progress feels lighter. (A rare but welcome sensation.)
Friction will always exist. The difference is whether it quietly erodes delivery, or becomes something your organisation knows how to work with deliberately.
If you’re noticing work that sounds aligned but doesn’t reliably land, decisions that circle without resolving, or capable people slowly becoming cautious – that’s friction talking. The question is not who is at fault, but what practices are missing.
To explore how to surface and remove friction without blame using practical coordination practices, connect with VISION Capital Projects Director, Peter Luff at pluff@vision.com
