When decision rights are unclear, decisions default back to the safest place: familiarity. The same people are consulted. The same conversations replay. Without explicit ownership, the organisation keeps circling the question, hoping clarity will emerge on its own.

But indispensability carries a hidden cost — not just for the individual, but for the organisation itself.

They don’t do this because they’re told to.
They do it because they can.

Strain rarely announces itself as a problem.

In many organisations, fine is sustained by effort rather than structure. Decisions take more thought than they used to. Certain people carry disproportionate and unsustainable responsibility and workloads.