The Cart That Wouldn’t Move

A simple story about why work gets stuck in organisations

There’s a particular kind of frustration that appears in organisations once they become even moderately complex.

Everyone seems busy as if to demonstrate their worth, teams are working hard and the number of meetings steadily increases.

And yet somehow, the thing you are actually trying to deliver never quite moves as smoothly as you wanted it to. Progress feels sporadic and slower than expected, but harder than it has to be.
Most people respond by looking for more effort, more process, or better coordination.

Growing up in Bulgaria, there was a story we learned early that explained the problem far more clearly than many modern frameworks ever have.

It’s called “Orel, Rak i Shtuka” which translates to “The Eagle, the Crab and the Pike”.
It is a rather simple fable which seems to describe organisational life remarkably well.


The Story


Three animals decide to work together. They have a cart to move, and they agree to pull it as one.
They lean in. They apply effort. They pull with intent.
But each pulls in a different direction.
The eagle pulls upwards, trying to lift the cart into the sky.
The crab moves backwards, because that is simply how crabs move.
And the pike drags towards the water, the place that makes sense to it.
None of them are lazy. None of them are refusing to help.
Each is acting according to its own nature.
And so the cart stays exactly where it is.


I only learned much later that the story itself isn’t originally Bulgarian. But that’s where I first heard it, and like most people who grow up with it, I’ve never quite forgotten it.


From Story to Organisation


The mapping is almost too obvious.

The cart is the work. The thing you are trying to deliver. The value you are trying to create.
The animals are the teams, functions, departments, and leadership groups surrounding it.
And the problem is not effort but direction and alignment.


Work only moves properly when forces align. When they don’t, effort starts cancelling itself out.

Yet most organisations respond to slow progress in a very similar way - by adding more.


More meetings.
More reporting.
More process.
More control
More escalations.
More pressure.
…


Very few stop to check whether everyone is actually pulling in the same direction. In fact some deliberately “do their own thing” as instructed by their leaders.


The Forces Inside Most Organisations

In most organisations, you can already see versions of the eagle, the crab, and the pike.
There is always a force pulling upwards, towards transformation, ambition, strategic change, growth.

Without that force, organisations stagnate.

But strategy has a tendency to drift away from operational reality. Initiatives become abstract. Ambition grows faster than the system’s ability to absorb it.

The eagle keeps pulling higher, while the rest of the organisation struggles to follow.

At the same time, there is usually another force pulling cautiously backwards.

Governance. Operational stability. Risk management. Legacy systems. Existing commitments.

This force matters too. Without it, organisations become unstable and fragile.


But its natural instinct is protection. It slows movement down. It adds checks, gates, and caution. Sometimes for good reasons. Sometimes simply because the existing system has learned to defend itself.

And then there are the delivery teams themselves, your engineers. and product teams, and maybe even operations. These are the people trying to move work through the system in the most practical way possible.

Often, here too, there is a tendency to optimise locally. Especially when leadership is fragmented, teams may focus on their own objectives, their own deadlines, and their own metrics of success.

And despite that work moves, it does not always move in a direction that helps move the cart overall.

It’s a situation in which nobody is doing anything particularly wrong individually or for specifically bad reasons. It’s just that they are not always aligned.


Why Work Stops Flowing


When you start seeing organisations through the whole system lens, many familiar problems begin to make more sense.

What makes priorities shift constantly? Why work starts but rarely finishes? Why do we have so many dependencies that slow everything down? Why are teams blaming one another? or looking to avoid being blamed?

Every team reports progress and they are always doing “a lot of good work” yet there is not much overall progress.

And because everyone goes out of their way to demonstrated that they are genuinely busy, the next assumption is that the problem must be either effort, capability, or execution discipline.
Of course there usually isn’t a measurement to support this statement.

And more often than not it’s not a fair statement to make. If someone was looking at the whole system and measuring flow that may well conclude that it’s a system design problem.

There are some simple things that are needed to help with flow.

A shared direction is rather obvious, but it is amazing how people can rationalise that into several very different directions based on leadership’s personal interpretation or other influences to priority. Establishing and maintaining shared direction is one of the crucial jobs of the top leaders in organisations and it requires dedicated continuous effort to communicate and align. Some may even say it is a full time job.


Being clear about constraints. We often forget our learning journey and assume everyone understands terms, rules and constraints the same way we do. Organisational constraints need to be clear and visible, communicated often and explained in accessible language.


Short feedback cycles is arguably the most difficult to implement of the three but it is crucial and there are many examples and frameworks to help you shorten your feedback cycles. Enabling feedback that arrives quickly enough for people to adjust before effort is wasted can be the difference maker on your improvement journey.


When an organisation struggles with these three, don’t be surprised if even highly capable teams spend enormous energy pulling against one another without realising it.


What some people often miss and what to do about it


Not us of course. This is about other people who miss things.

Perhaps you’ve witnessed this? Just like in the old fable everyone behaves rationally. Like every animal, every team is doing what makes sense from where they stand.
In a very generalised way: the leadership team pushes for innovation and change while the governance teams try to reduce risk and the delivery teams focus on optimising for execution.

On their own, all of these behaviours are sensible but altogether, they can work against one another. And adding more pressure to a system that can’t handle it, will never solve the problem.
Instead, it often makes it worse.

More pressure will not make the system adapt, it causes each part of the system to pull harder in its own direction.

And yet there are organisations that move well and they tend to have a few things in common - clear direction, visible constraints and faster feedback.

When you people understand, and ideally can see, how their work contributes to movement of the whole system, and not just their own part, they correct course and adjust to move together.

I know it sounds obvious when written down but sadly, it is surprisingly rare.


The Eagle, the Crab and the Pike


We grew up with this story as children in Bulgaria and it’s made to sounds simple so that kids understand it. At times I think it’s too simple.

But as I grow older and experience different work environments, I often find myself thinking about it when I evaluate organisations.

I rarely come across people who are unhelpful, or teams that are irrational, or effort that is fake.
And yet, the cart will not move. And the leaders will not learn.
Presumably because they already know best.

I suppose Adam Grant is right "We listen to views that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard.” (see "Think again", 2021)