They gave it to us because we had capacity.
Work goes to whoever has room
Work gets assigned to whoever has capacity rather than whoever has the most relevant expertise. The expertise exists somewhere in the organization, but people do not know where to find it, so it never reaches the work.
- Generalists handle specialist problems while the specialist works on something else.
- People can't name the expert on a topic without asking around.
- People find things out by asking whoever has been there longest: "Ask Dave. He's been here forever."
Who: whoever assigns work in this workflow. Ask: "For the last three pieces of work, who would have been the best person, and who got it?" Count: how many went to the best-fit person. You're probably looking at this pattern if most went to whoever was free and the best-fit person was never asked. Probably not if the right person got the work but still lacked what they needed. If not, compare it with Context stripped in the handoff.
Knowledge stuck behind team lines. In that pattern, the expert is on another team and the workflow never crosses over. In this pattern, the expert may sit on the same team.
For your next big decision, list the three or four kinds of knowledge it depends on, and write a name next to each.
Ask openly who is best placed to lead the next piece, and name them.
Across 65 studies, a team's knowledge of who knows what was more strongly linked to its performance than everyone holding the same knowledge (DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus, 2010). Established: a meta-analysis of 65 studies.