I've worked in a lot of different organizations and have seen this happen over and over again.<p>One point the author misses is that it becomes received knowledge that certain parts of the problem are insolvable. After a dozen or two meetings trying to solve something, the participants believe (and tell one another) that this part of the problem can't be solved.<p>There's a certain pivot point that happens when you join an organization. At first, you're asking "Why can't we do X?" and "If we do Y, won't that fix this part of the problem?"<p>Each time, you are told that yes, we tried that. Several times. Really smart people tried. It didn't work.<p>Now the trick here is that you don't know if that's true or not. You don't know how many times it was tried, who tried it, what strategy they used, or exactly how things played out. It's all just secondhand information.<p>Do that enough? Pretty soon you're the person telling the new guy that we've already been down this road. It just can't be done. You stop being part of the solution and start being part of the problem. (And then some new organization comes along and solves the problem quite nicely. Cue up a lot of "Well, we could do it to if we only had Z like they did!" sour grapes talk.)<p>For an outsider trying to help people, when you hear yourself doing this, it's time to go. You are no longer a positive agent of change.