When Habits Become Untouchable, Delivery Dies

Richard Branson recently summarised a discipline most organisations quietly abandoned:

Sell the problem, not the solution.

The statement sounds obvious. Yet, in practice, many companies now operate in reverse.

They protect solutions.
They defend architectures.
They preserve habits.

In doing so, they gradually lose sight of the problem they were meant to solve.

The silent shift

What we are witnessing is not resistance to change, nor even fear of it.

It is something more corrosive. Teams no longer consider changing habits.Thinking differently has not become difficult. It has become unnecessary.

This shift is visible at product level, at engineering level, and most critically at the seam between the two. The articulation between Product Managers and Engineering Managers is not a detail of execution. It is the pivot of delivery. It is where strategy becomes tangible or quietly dissolves.

When this articulation weakens, delivery does not fail dramatically. It slowly loses tension.

From exploration to preservation

Not long ago, teams still attempted to explore.

They questioned flows.
They sliced scope.
They treated demos as probes rather than ceremonies.

Today, a different reflex dominates.

It is too big.
It has to be complex.
That is how the architecture works, etc.

The conversation ends before it begins. The difficulty of the problems did not change. The willingness to question assumptions did.

Instead of asking how delivery could reshape the system, teams now ask how delivery can fit around what already exists.

When delivery bends to legacy

Incremental value delivery once had a clear meaning.

It meant exposing value early.
It meant learning fast.
It meant allowing architecture to evolve under the pressure of delivery.

That flow has reversed these days.

Delivery now bends to legacy.
Process bends to architecture.
Roadmaps bend to constraints no one remembers choosing.

Rather than refining value, organisations preserve structure.

This is how systems freeze. Not through refusal, but through pre-emptive resignation.

The disappearance of demo pull

The demo was never meant to be a performance. It was a forcing function. It created pressure to answer uncomfortable questions:

• What is the smallest thing that proves progress?
• What can be exposed without being complete?
• What conversation will this trigger?

As demos disappear, that pressure evaporates. And sometimes openly:

There is nothing demoable yet.

Sometimes quietly:

• Status updates replace artefacts
• Slides replace behaviour
• Complexity becomes a shield

Without demo pull, there is no obligation to think differently.

When product and engineering retreat

This is where the Product–Engineering articulation matters most. When it functions, it creates productive tension:

Product frames outcomes as bets.
Engineering challenges feasibility with alternatives.
Together, they reshape the path.

When it fails, both sides retreat.

Product stops framing outcomes as falsifiable.
Product protects predictability over learning.

Engineering stops proposing alternative slices.
Engineering stops using delivery pressure to reshape architecture.

Agreement remains, but collaboration disappears.

Two uncomfortable truths

There are truths rarely stated clearly.

First: denying fast feedback loops is a betrayal of the customer.

A customer cannot react to what never reaches production. No signal means no correction. And delaying exposure does not protect quality. It delays reality.

Second: anything that does not reach production has zero value.

Ideas do not generate value.
Plans do not generate value.
Timelines do not generate value.

Only production does generate value. Everything else is potential, and unexposed potential is simply waste.

Real-world decay examples

IBM offers a clear illustration.

The organisation did not lack intelligence, capital, or engineering pedigree. What it lacked was willingness to challenge its own structures. Legacy systems became immovable truths. Delivery adapted around them. Exploration became framed as risk rather than responsibility.

The result was not collapse, but prolonged irrelevance.

Intel followed a similar pattern.

Execution stretched across long timelines. Feedback loops remained internal. Roadmaps became commitments rather than hypotheses.

The market moved faster than Intel was prepared to learn in public.

Ignoring the box altogether

A remark attributed to Senator Ted Cruz captures a useful contrast when describing Elon Musk’s success.

Musk does not think outside the box. He ignores it.

Constraints are not inherited. They are revalidated.

SpaceX did not optimise existing space programmes. It rebuilt the delivery model. Tesla did not refine automotive roadmaps. It collapsed feedback loops between design, software, and production.

This is not a matter of genius. It is refusal to treat habits as facts.

Who benefits when habits go unchallenged

Not the customer.
Not the organisation.

The beneficiaries are those who speak the loudest while committing the least.

Those who shut down exploration with confidence.
Those who invoke complexity as authority.
Those who preserve the status quo because it preserves their position.

Loud certainty replaces shared inquiry, and the room aligns to avoid discomfort.

A familiar meeting

A thinner slice is proposed.
A learning bypass is suggested.
A demoable probe is on the table.

Someone responds:

That will not work with our architecture.

No alternative follows.
No experiment is offered.

The conversation closes.

This is not rigour. It is defensive storytelling.

Leadership, stripped of comfort

The cost is measurable. Months of salary spent without external signal. Capital consumed without validation. Architectures that grow heavier while delivering nothing new. This is not abstract waste. It is budget converted into inertia.

At some point, someone must reopen the space. Not with slogans, but with constraints, because constraints liberate:

• A two-week demo, without exceptions
• One production touchpoint, however small
• One assumption to invalidate

Changing habits is not a creativity problem. It is a leadership choice.

When habits become untouchable, delivery does not stall. It quietly stops being honest.