Helping people and institutions regain orientation when work gets complex.
We support sensemaking around the confusion, pressure, and constant adjustment that quietly drains capacity at work.
How We've Lost Our Bearings at Work
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What's Happening Beneath the Surface
When organizations don’t resolve contradictions, work starts to feel subtly off. Priorities shift faster than meaning can settle. Expectations multiply without clear ownership. Roles blur. Decisions half-land.
People adapt. They smooth gaps, absorb strain, manage appearances, and quietly hold things together so work can continue. These responses are often skilled and well-intended. They are how capable people keep systems functioning when clarity or authority is missing. Over time, effort shifts from doing the work to holding unresolved tensions together.
For some, this strain shows up inside a single role or leadership position. For others — including practitioners working across organizations, professional associations, research bodies, and leadership institutions
it appears as the same patterns repeating across many people, organizations, or conversations. When familiar tensions keep surfacing in different places, it is often a signal that the system itself is asking for orientation, not more effort.
At BBHQ, we use satire as a sensemaking practice to surface contradictions, reveal system dynamics, and make the familiar strange enough to notice.
That adaptation makes sense in the moment. But when it becomes constant, clarity and judgment erode. Not because people lack capability, but because systems increasingly rely on human compensation to carry what they have not resolved. See example scenarios we support.
The Meaning of "Behaving Badly"
What We Mean
“Behaving badly” is a satirical way of describing how people respond when modern work systems stop making sense. It names what happens when individuals, teams, and organizations adapt to unresolved contradictions rather than resolve them.
Priorities shift without reconciliation. Decisions stall. Structures no longer match expectations. And capable people step in to compensate so work can continue.
At the individual level, this often appears as workarounds, over-functioning, role stretching, emotional labor, and performance theatre used to remain credible.
At the team level, it shows up as misalignment, unspoken norms, competing definitions of “good work,” and quiet pressure to absorb strain rather than surface it.
At the organizational level, it appears as conflicting strategies, incentives pulling in opposite directions, symbolic commitments without structural support, and decisions pushed downward instead of resolved.
These behaviors are not careless or irrational. They are often skilled, adaptive responses to conditions that no longer provide clear bearings.
Behaving Badly Better is not about fixing people or correcting behavior. It means responding with awareness rather than autopilot. It is the practice of noticing the conditions shaping behavior, recognizing how responses reinforce or relieve those conditions, and choosing how to act with greater clarity and agency, even inside constraint.
Finding Your Bearings
Slowing Down To Notice
This work is about building orientation capability — the capacity to re-establish clarity and judgment when conditions shift faster than familiar reference points can keep up. When what you’re reading feels familiar and unsettling at the same time, that disorientation is not a failure. It’s a signal. It suggests the environment has changed faster than existing ways of making sense can accommodate.
Orientation begins by noticing what is actually shaping experience, rather than reacting automatically inside the noise. In practice, that means paying attention to:
- what is genuinely happening in the system
- what responses are habitual versus chosen
- what matters now, as distinct from what is merely loud or urgent
- where effort is being pulled, absorbed, or distorted
This shift marks the move from default reaction to deliberate participation. As orientation stabilizes, judgment becomes more reliable. From judgment, clearer choices start to emerge.
When To Reach Out
Need a human capacity and systems read on what's actually happening?
BBHQ works with leaders, practitioners, and leadership ecosystems to clarify what’s actually shaping behavior, decisions, and execution before more pressure is applied.
This work helps surface:
- the conditions influencing behavior right now
- where effort is being absorbed, distorted, or misdirected
- which options are genuinely available next
For individuals, this often shows up inside a single role or leadership context. For teams, organizations, or professional communities, it appears as familiar patterns repeating across people, initiatives, or conversations, including within associations, institutes, or leadership bodies.
Leaders typically reach out when something important feels harder to name than it should. This work supports orientation before deciding whether to push forward, pause, adjust, or reset, especially before, during, or after major initiatives that are not landing as expected.
Practitioners often reach out when they begin seeing the same tensions repeat across roles, teams, or initiatives despite well-designed plans or frameworks. This work supports practitioners in making sense of what they are observing in the field, strengthening judgment about what is actually happening, and determining where effort, intervention, or restraint is most appropriate.
Engagement may involve confidential 1:1 Insight Sessions, small-group sensemaking conversations, or the use of BBHQ research, tools, and publications by practitioners, leaders or institutions to support orientation at scale.
Where These Patterns Tend to Show Up
These patterns can appear within a single role, team, or organization, or repeat across many people, initiatives, or member groups at once. They often surface differently at each level, while pointing to the same underlying conditions.
Individual / Leader Focus
Often experienced by:
- High performers seeking sustainable productivity rather than constant push
- Leaders pulled in multiple directions with diminishing clarity
- Career transitions where judgment and direction feel harder to access
- High-capacity people beginning to disengage quietly, without obvious conflict
Team & Leadership Dynamics
(examined through the leader’s role in the system)
Common patterns include:
- Senior teams that appear aligned, yet decisions stall or loop
- Cross-team work where accountability is diffuse and progress depends on workarounds
- Leadership roles carrying strategy, execution, and sensemaking at the same time
- Continued effort with little visible traction or follow-through
Organizational Conditions
Frequently seen when:
- Business changes consume energy without producing momentum
- Culture or HR initiatives generate unintended behaviors
- Strategy refreshes fail to translate into coordinated execution
- AI or technology rollouts are technically clear, but human impact is harder to read
What We Do
Pattern Spotting
Research & Writing
What we look at
We observe what happens when modern work stops holding together.
We look for recurring dynamics, contradictions, and workarounds that quietly shape behavior across individuals, teams, and organizations.
Not surface symptoms, but the patterns that keep repeating even as roles, strategies, and priorities change.
These patterns are often first recognized by practitioners working across roles, teams, and systems, before they are formally named or addressed.
Explore recent observations in The Brief →
Research & Writing
Research & Writing
What we make sense of
We investigate these patterns through field observation, analysis, and writing.
This work surfaces how predictable responses emerge under complex conditions, restoring shared language and perspective so practitioners, leaders, and institutions can see what is actually happening and interrupt autopilot.
We use satirical sensemaking and systems commentary to make patterns visible without reducing them to prescriptions.
Read investigations and reports in the Vault →
Orientation Tools & Insight Sessions
Orientation Tools & Insight Sessions
How people work with this
We design practical tools and focused sensemaking conversations that support clearer judgment and action in real conditions.
These are used by individuals, teams, organizations, and leadership ecosystems navigating sustained complexity, change, or transition.
We design practical tools and focused sensemaking conversations that support clearer judgment and action in real conditions.
These are used by practitioners, leaders, teams, organizations, and leadership ecosystems navigating sustained complexity, change, or transition.
See how people work with BBHQ →
Read our First Field Tale
Who Ate My Muffin?
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A true story disguised as a modern parable about reactivity, trust,
and the tiny misunderstandings that send teams spiraling.
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