After chairing an admissions meeting where agreed actions hadn’t moved, I’m increasingly convinced that stalled progress is usually a norms problem — rooted in behaviour, values and what people believe it’s safe to say.

Yesterday, things didn’t go the way I expected.

A lot of the discussion was about the gap between what we agreed last time and what happened in between. In the previous meeting we agreed actions, named owners, set deadlines and logged them properly so there was no ambiguity about ownership or timing.

When we came back together, too many of the important actions hadn’t moved. These were things that matter to how admissions worked.

When things are agreed and don’t happen, people just assume it’s ok for actions not to get done. At that point it’s very easy to focus on the actions that didn’t happen and who they were assigned to. I’ve done that before. I’m just not convinced it’s usually the right place to start.

When I thought about it afterwards, one issue was fairly obvious. In some cases, the task hadn’t been broken down enough to act on. It sounded clear when we talked about it, but once people went away, it wasn’t actually clear enough to move without more decisions being made.

Everyone nodded at the time — which I understand, because nodding is easy — but only later did it become obvious that “do X” actually meant several smaller steps that no one had really talked through. If that’s what’s going on, that’s my responsibility.

In other cases, the action itself was clear enough. People knew what needed to happen and what the first step was. What got in the way was that doing it meant stepping into something uncertain, using a skill someone wasn’t yet fully confident in, or making a call that felt exposed. Logging the action doesn’t remove that. It just means it’s written down. So it sits there while other, easier, more urgent things get dealt with instead.

I see this happen a lot. The urgent things get done because they’re easier to start. The important ones slip, not because people don’t care, but because starting them feels uncomfortable.

This is the bit I’ve had to reflect on most. If I want actions to move, it’s not enough to agree them, assign them and track them. I also need to be confident that the person taking them on has the skills to do it, or at least feels able to say if they don’t. That might mean support, pairing with a colleague, or sometimes training. That’s just part of the job.

None of this works unless people are comfortable speaking up. If something isn’t clear, they need to be able to say that. If a timescale won’t work, they need to be able to push back. If there’s a skills gap, it needs to come out early. The key point is before the meeting moves on. Once an action is written down, people tend to stay quiet, even if they have doubts.

At EUB, we talk a lot about empowerment. What this has made clearer to me is that empowerment isn’t about pushing responsibility downwards. It’s about making it easier for people to take responsibility without worrying about how it will be interpreted. Sometimes that’s something very ordinary, like being comfortable asking for help.

Most skills gaps aren’t big. They’re small things, like not knowing the right Excel command, not being sure which system does what, or not quite knowing how to approach a task you haven’t done before. In practice, that isn’t a problem. You ask someone, they help, and you move on. The problem starts when people don’t feel comfortable asking. Then small gaps turn into blockers and things don’t move.

What we work hard on at EUB is keeping things straightforward. People do what they say they’ll do, and if something isn’t working, it gets talked about in the room. Decisions are made together, and even when actions sit with one person, they’re not carried alone.

That matters because success doesn’t come from one person pushing things through. It comes from teams thinking things through properly together.

These days, when something doesn’t move, I’m less interested in who didn’t do it. I’m more interested in what we didn’t talk about at the time.