The Most Dangerous Thing in Any Organization Isn’t What You Think

Why Problem Framing Is the Most Dangerous Organizational Risk

The most dangerous thing in any organization isn’t a lack of talent, broken processes, or even conflict. It’s something far quieter—the kind of thing that hides in plain sight until someone finally slows down enough to notice it.

That’s exactly what unfolded at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, just after two clinicians nearly lost a postoperative infant during a high-risk handover. Still shaken, they stepped into a break room, where a Formula 1 pit stop flashed across the TV—and suddenly the real problem came into focus. What they realized in that moment transformed their entire system—and ultimately, patient outcomes.

I found myself returning to this story during a recent conversation with my friend Joshua Marano, founder of Foundational Coaching, on his podcast Off the Hinges focusing on the topic of “Framing and Problem Framing.” Joshua has a gift for asking the kind of questions that make you dig down deep and think hard. 

Two questions in particular form our conversation stayed with me.

1. “What’s more dangerous — having no shared frame, or having a shared frame that is wrong?”

This question gets to the heart of why organizations get stuck.

A team with no shared frame is disorganized.

A team with a wrong, shared frame is dangerous.

Because when everyone agrees on an incorrect understanding of the problem, they can execute flawlessly—in the wrong direction.

The story from Great Ormond Street captures this perfectly. The hospital was a world-class pediatric heart center. Their surgeries were excellent. Their team was highly skilled. And yet, infants were dying, not in the operating room— but after surgery, during the transfer into intensive care.

The unspoken shared frame was:

“The critical work happens in the OR.”

As long as that frame held, the real vulnerability—the chaotic handover—remained hidden.

The turning point came in the most ordinary way: two exhausted clinicians sitting in the break room after a difficult transfer, watching a Formula 1 race on TV. They saw a Ferrari pit crew execute a flawless pit stop—precise, choreographed, almost silent—and suddenly recognized their own problem.

Their handover wasn’t a medical issue.

It was a coordination issue.

That single reframing changed everything. They partnered with Ferrari’s pit-crew engineers, redesigned the choreography, clarified roles and communication patterns, and ultimately reduced technical errors by nearly half.

Inspired by Formula 1 pit-stop precision, clinical teams redesigned handovers to reduce errors and save lives.

That’s what happens when a team questions a frame everyone else assumes is true.

2. “When you feel resistance to another person’s perspective, what helps you move from defending your frame to exploring theirs?”

The most transformative leaders I’ve worked with aren’t the ones who argue the best or loudest. They’re the ones who stay curious the longest.

When I feel that first flicker of resistance—that instinct to defend my perspective—there are two questions I rely on:

1.     “What problem are they actually trying to solve?”

2.     “What would have to be true for their view to make perfect sense?”

As systems theorist Peter Senge notes, the biggest barrier to insight isn’t ignorance but the illusion of knowledge; asking what would have to be true for someone else’s view to make sense interrupts that illusion and forces us to consider another valid mental model.

Behavioral economists have long shown that people argue about solutions because they’re often solving different underlying problems—a core idea in Clayton Christensen’s Jobs-To-Be-Done theory—which is why asking what problem someone is actually trying to solve reveals the real issue beneath the surface.

Thus, those two questions move people out of defensiveness and into discovery.

It’s the same mindset shift those NICU clinicians had to make. Their first instinct was to rely on what they already knew—their expertise, their training, their established frame. Initially there was resistance. How in the world can mechanics teach us about surgery and medical procedures?! But when they paused long enough to reframe the problem —a pit-crew frame—they found a breakthrough in a place no one in medicine had thought to look.

That’s what problem framing really is.

Not abandoning your perspective—just loosening your grip on it long enough to see the structure around you more clearly.

A quote typically attributed to Albert Einstein, helps define the core of problem framing best:

“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask. For once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”

Why These Questions Matter

These two questions—about frames and about resistance—have stayed with me because they apply everywhere: in leadership, communication, strategy, and even in how we understand ourselves.

My conversation on Off the Hinges reminded me that breakthroughs rarely come from pushing harder. They come from seeing differently. They come from noticing the part of the system everyone has learned to overlook.

They come from simple questions asked at the exact moment someone is willing to slow down and pay attention.

Sometimes the path forward is already in the room—we’ve just stopped noticing it.

I’m grateful for the chance to share this dialogue, and even more grateful for the reminder that clarity often begins with a question we didn’t realize we needed.