The illusion of action

This article is part of a broader line of work on systems, structure, and decision-making developed at Inratios.

In the previous article, The unseen whole, I argued that most systems fail before action begins. Not because people hesitate, but because they act on an incomplete picture of the situation.
This piece looks at what usually happens next.
When pressure rises, action starts to feel like progress.
And that is where many systems quietly lose control.

Action feels right when uncertainty rises
Across domains, you’ll see the same reflex appear.

• In organizations facing change.
• In crises unfolding under time pressure.
• In markets reacting to new information.

There is always someone who asks what should be done.
Doing something feels responsible.
Standing still feels risky.
Action creates movement.
Movement creates visibility.
Visibility creates the feeling of control.
That feeling is comforting.
And often misleading.

A simple chain explains most failures
Most failures follow the same sequence.
An incomplete picture of the situation leads to an imprecise judgment.
An imprecise judgment leads to a poor decision.

• Wrong picture.
• Wrong judgment.
• Wrong decision.

This is why the mistake is rarely obvious at the moment it is made.
The decision often looks reasonable.
The error is already embedded earlier, when the picture was formed.

Speed is mistaken for control
Many situations appeal to speed to create a sense of control.
If we move quickly, we feel in charge.
If we slow down, it feels like losing ground.
In reality, speed often only amplifies what is already there.
If the bigger picture is incomplete, fast action spreads the error even faster.
If the picture is wrong, decisive action locks the system into the wrong path.
Speed does not resolve uncertainty.
It propagates it.

When not acting is active work
This is where intuition drifts away from reality.
Not acting is often interpreted as indecision.
As hesitation.
As lack of leadership.
Yet experienced professionals regularly delay action on purpose.
Not because they are passive.
But because they are actively working on understanding the situation.
They know that once the first move is made, the system starts responding. Options narrow. Narratives form. Reversing course becomes costly.
In that sense, restraint can be a higher form of control.

The cost of confusing action with progress
When action replaces understanding, change becomes superficial.
Symptoms are addressed.
Underlying constraints remain.
Organizations introduce solutions for problems that were never clearly defined. Sometimes, they were not problems at all.
Crises escalate because early interventions distort the picture further.
Markets become volatile because decisions are driven by signals without context.
The system looks busy.
But it does not improve.

Why this illusion persists
The illusion of action survives because it is rewarded.
Decisions are visible.
Movement is measurable.
Waiting is hard to justify.
Understanding is quiet work.
It rarely looks impressive from the outside.
So systems optimize for activity instead of clarity.
And then wonder why the same problems return.

Seeing before doing
In The unseen whole, the focus was on why forming the right picture matters.
This article shows what often goes wrong when action takes over too soon.
Seeing before doing challenges a deeply ingrained reflex.
It treats understanding as active work, not as a delay.
It accepts that control begins with perception, not intervention.
And it recognizes that speed without clarity is not progress.
This runs against intuition.
Which is exactly why it matters.

In the next blog, I will focus on crisis management, and show why spending most of the effort on forming the picture is not bureaucracy, but rational risk reduction.