Organizational clarity: framework, signals, and leader health impact

Abstract

This article proposes a conceptual framework for understanding organizational clarity in SMEs and mid-sized companies - defined as an organization's capacity to be understood by those who lead it, those who work in it, and those who observe it from the outside. Drawing on foundational work in organizational theory (Weick, 1995; Kahneman, 2011; Martin, 2018), we identify three recurring warning signals - decision concentration (S1), the gap between stated and effective delegation (S2), and undocumented human dependencies (S3) - and show their impact on leaders' health using data from the Amarok Observatory and the Bpifrance Le Lab study. We conclude that organizational clarity is a precondition for any lasting transformation and for preserving the health of SME leaders.

Keywords: organizational clarity, SMEs, leader health, organizational blindness, decision concentration, organizational resilience.

1. Introduction

SME and mid-market leaders face a rarely articulated paradox: the better they know their organization, the less clearly they see it. This phenomenon — which we propose to call organizational blindness — is not the product of a lack of competence. It is, on the contrary, the flip side of expertise accumulated over the long term.

Academic literature in management science has focused extensively on steering tools, dashboards, and performance indicators. It has paid less attention to a more fundamental question: does the leader still see their organization as it actually works? Not as they designed it. Not as it appears on the org chart. As it operates, day to day, with its strengths, its fragilities, and what's no longer seen.

This article proposes a framework to address this question. It draws on three bodies of work: the theory of organizational sensemaking (Weick, 1995), research on managerial cognition (Kahneman, 2011), studies on organizational clarity (Martin, 2018), and data on the health and isolation of SME leaders (Amarok Observatory, 2012-2021; Bpifrance Le Lab, 2016 and 2026).

2. Theoretical framework: toward a definition of organizational clarity

2.1 Organizational sensemaking — Weick (1995)

Karl Weick, in Sensemaking in Organizations (1995), defines sensemaking as the process by which the members of an organization collectively construct meaning about what is happening. In SMEs, this process has a structural characteristic: it is heavily centered on the leader.

In most SMEs, the leader is the primary producer of organizational meaning. Their interpretations of a situation become the organization's interpretations. Their blind spots become collective blind spots. Their certainties become shared certainties. Weick calls this phenomenon the enacted environment — the environment an organization creates by perceiving it.

"An organization sees what its leader sees. And it no longer sees what the leader no longer sees." (Weick, 1995, adapted)

This cognitive dependence has direct consequences for organizational clarity: when the leader loses perspective on their organization, the entire organization loses that perspective with them.

2.2 Perceptual habituation — Kahneman (2011)

Daniel Kahneman, in Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), distinguishes two cognitive systems: System 1, fast and intuitive, and System 2, slow and analytical. System 1 operates through energy economy: it ignores what is stable and familiar to focus attention on what changes.

For a leader who has run the same organization for five, ten, or fifteen years, this mechanism produces a form of progressive blindness. What was once visible — a tension between two teams, a dependence on a key employee, a meeting that has become pointless — literally disappears from the perceptual field. Not through negligence, but through neurological adaptation.

Kahneman also documents normalization bias: the tendency to gradually accept situations that, seen from the outside, would be judged abnormal or unacceptable. In organizations, this bias shows up in the normalization of dysfunction: the process no one follows, the tension everyone works around, the dependence no one questions.

2.3 Organizational clarity — Martin (2018)

Karen Martin, in Clarity First (2018), offers one of the most operational frameworks for thinking about organizational clarity in SMEs. She identifies four zones of systematic ambiguity in growing organizations:

• Role ambiguity: who is really responsible for what, beyond the formal org chart.
• Process ambiguity: how things actually get done, as opposed to how they should be done.
• Priority ambiguity: what teams actually focus their energy on.
• Outcome ambiguity: what a job well done concretely means.

Martin shows that these four zones of ambiguity, left untreated, generate considerable hidden costs: redundant meetings, repeated decisions, know-how left untransferred, and energy wasted compensating for what isn't seen.

3. Three warning signals of organizational clarity: S1, S2, S3

Building on these theoretical frameworks and on field practice with SME and mid-market leaders, we propose three warning signals for assessing an organization's level of clarity. These signals are not indicators of dysfunction — they reveal structural fragilities that settle in silently in any growing organization.

Signal S1 — Decision concentration

Definition: the proportion of operational and strategic decisions that pass through the leader, regardless of their complexity or their real impact on the organization.

Signal S1 measures a phenomenon documented in the literature on managerial centralization (Mintzberg, 1979): in SMEs, decision concentration tends to increase over time — not because the leader chooses to centralize, but because the organization learns to hand the arbitration back to them. Every decision the leader makes implicitly reinforces the norm: they're the one who decides.

Measurable consequences: longer decision times, a culture of waiting within teams, reduced individual initiative, and growing cognitive overload for the leader. Mintzberg (1979) notes that in simple structures — the dominant form in SMEs — decision concentration is structurally favored, making it a systemic risk rather than an anomaly.

Operational indicator: What proportion of the decisions made in your organization this week required your direct sign-off? A ratio above 60% constitutes a significant S1 signal.

Signal S2 — Stated delegation versus effective delegation

Definition: a measure of the gap between an organization's formal delegation structure (org chart, job descriptions, procedures) and its real delegation structure as observed in everyday behavior.

This signal builds on the concept of the informal organization developed by Barnard (1938) and taken up in work on the duality of structures (Giddens, 1984). In any organization, two structures coexist: the formal structure, visible and documented, and the informal structure, real but unwritten. In SMEs, the gap between these two structures tends to widen with growth, without the leader necessarily being aware of it.

Signal S2 is especially revealing because it exposes a fundamental contradiction: the leader thinks they've delegated; the teams, meanwhile, have learned that delegation is conditional. They implicitly know when to decide on their own and when to wait. This information asymmetry produces adaptive behaviors that, over time, reduce the organization's real autonomy.

Operational indicator: If you were away for three weeks and unreachable, which decisions would be blocked? The list of those decisions maps out Signal S2.

Signal S3 — Undocumented human dependencies

Definition: the concentration of know-how, strategic relationships, or critical skills in a small number of individuals, without that concentration being documented, shared, or anticipated in how the organization operates.

Signal S3 draws on work on firm-specific human capital (Becker, 1964) and the risks tied to the concentration of tacit knowledge (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). In SMEs, the transfer of tacit knowledge is structurally limited: organizations are small, processes are often informal, and formalizing knowledge is seen as needless bureaucracy. The result is an organization whose resilience depends on the presence of a few key individuals — whose departure can deeply destabilize how it functions.

What sets Signal S3 apart from classic HR risk-management approaches is that it doesn't only concern employees: it concerns the leader as well. In many SMEs, the most critical tacit knowledge is the one the leader carries — their client relationships, their reading of the market, their intuitions about the organization. This knowledge, undocumented and untransferred, weakens the organization the moment a transition is considered.

Operational indicator: If three key employees left your organization in the same month, which critical functions would be left without guaranteed continuity? The extent of that list constitutes Signal S3.

4. Impact on leaders' health

The three signals S1, S2, and S3 are not only indicators of organizational fragility. They have a direct, documented impact on the physical and mental health of SME leaders.

4.1 The Amarok Observatory and Bpifrance Le Lab

The Amarok Observatory, founded by Prof. Olivier Torrès (University of Montpellier — Montpellier Business School), is the first scientific observatory dedicated to the health of SME leaders in France. Since 2012, it has conducted several epidemiological studies among thousands of leaders. Its work, often carried out in collaboration with Bpifrance Le Lab, the CPME, and Harmonie Mutuelle, produces a unique body of evidence on the relationships between the conditions of leadership in SMEs and the health of leaders.

4.2 Decision-making isolation — a structural phenomenon

One of the most significant findings on the health of SME leaders concerns their isolation. The Bpifrance Le Lab study "Vaincre les solitudes du dirigeant" (Overcoming the leader's solitudes), across its two editions (2016 and 2026), documents a structural and persistent phenomenon: 45% of leaders reported feeling isolated in 2016, rising to 49% in 2026. Above all, the intensity is worsening — the share who describe themselves as "very isolated" rose from 11% to 18% in ten years.

This sense of isolation peaks at decisive moments in the life of the company. According to the 2026 edition, it reaches 42% when preparing a handover, and 58% during periods of economic difficulty. The Amarok Observatory's work confirms that this isolation depends neither on the size of the company, nor on its sector, nor on the profile of the leader. It is structural.

This finding sheds direct light on Signal S1. Decision concentration is not only a risk for the organization — it is a factor of isolation for the leader. The more they centralize decisions, the more isolated they become in handling them. And that isolation, over time, degrades the very quality of the trade-offs they make.

4.3 Impediment burnout — a specific form of burnout

The Amarok study "Entreprendre sans s'épuiser" (Building a business without burning out), conducted with the CPME and Harmonie Mutuelle among 1,731 leaders (Torrès & Kinowski-Moysan, 2019; updated in 2020-2021), introduced a new concept into the literature on professional burnout: impediment burnout.

Unlike classic burnout from overwork — where the leader does too much and exhausts themselves in action — impediment burnout is characterized by feelings of powerlessness and being stuck. The leader no longer knows where to act first. They sense fragilities without being able to name them clearly. They make decisions without feeling that they are truly steering.

"Impediment burnout arises when the leader no longer sees their organization clearly — and continues to be its sole guarantor." (Torrès, adapted)

The correlation with signals S1, S2, and S3 is direct. A leader who concentrates every decision (S1), whose delegation is illusory (S2), and whose organization depends on a few irreplaceable individuals (S3) is structurally exposed to impediment burnout: they cannot let go without risking destabilization, and they cannot hold on indefinitely without exhausting themselves.

The study also notes a significant worsening of the phenomenon during the health crisis: the share of leaders at risk of severe burnout rose from 1.75% before the first lockdown to 10.41% in 2021 — a sixfold increase that illustrates the systemic fragility of organizations whose clarity had not been addressed before the crisis.

5. Toward a model of organizational clarity

Building on the theoretical frameworks brought together here and on the Amarok and Bpifrance data, we propose a model of organizational clarity structured around three interdependent dimensions.

5.1 The structural dimension

This concerns the coherence between the formal organization and the real organization. It is measured by Signal S2 (the gap between stated and effective delegation) and Signal S3 (undocumented human dependencies). A structurally clear organization is one where what is written matches what is done — or at least, where the gaps are known, named, and managed.

5.2 The decision-making dimension

This concerns the real distribution of decision-making power within the organization. It is measured by Signal S1 (decision concentration). A decisionally clear organization is one where each hierarchical level genuinely holds the decision-making power formally assigned to it — and where the leader is not the mandatory checkpoint for every trade-off.

5.3 The perceptual dimension

This concerns the leader's ability to see their organization with perspective — to distinguish what is solid from what is fragile, what holds from what is cracking. This dimension is the least measurable but the most fundamental: it determines the quality of the first two. A leader whose perception is impaired by habituation (Kahneman, 2011) or isolation (Bpifrance Le Lab, 2026) cannot effectively steer the structural and decision-making dimensions.

It is precisely this perceptual dimension that a clarity engagement targets first: not transforming the organization, but giving the leader back a clear view of what they have built — so they can decide well.

6. Conclusion and practical implications

Organizational clarity is a notion still barely formalized in the dedicated academic literature — and yet central to the practice of advising SME leaders. This article proposes an initial conceptual framework bringing together organizational theory, cognitive science, and data on leaders' health in order to grasp what is at stake.

The three signals S1, S2, and S3 are operational tools for quickly assessing an organization's level of clarity. Their value is not diagnostic in the medical sense — it is revelatory: they make it possible to name what the leader vaguely senses but no longer sees clearly.

Data from the Amarok Observatory and Bpifrance Le Lab show that this loss of clarity is not without human consequences. Decision-making isolation and impediment burnout are the most documented manifestations of a leader who steers without seeing — and who carries alone what the organization should have carried with them.

The practical implications of this work are direct: organizational clarity is not a luxury reserved for large corporations. It is a condition of durability for any growing SME or mid-market company. And it can be worked on — with method, with perspective, and with a view that is no longer that of the insider.

"What isn't seen can't be steered. What isn't named can't be passed on. What isn't passed on can't endure."

Bibliographie

Barnard, C. I. (1938). The Functions of the Executive. Harvard University Press.

Becker, G. S. (1964). Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis. University of Chicago Press.

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Bpifrance Le Lab. (2026). Vaincre les solitudes du dirigeant — nouvelle édition. Bpifrance.

Giddens, A. (1984). The Constitution of Society. Polity Press.

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Martin, K. (2018). Clarity First: How Smart Leaders and Organizations Achieve Outstanding Performance. McGraw-Hill.

Mintzberg, H. (1979). The Structuring of Organizations. Prentice-Hall.

Nonaka, I., & Takeuchi, H. (1995). The Knowledge-Creating Company. Oxford University Press.

Torrès, O. (2012). La santé du dirigeant. De Boeck.

Torrès, O., & Kinowski-Moysan, C. (2019). Dépistage de l'épuisement et prévention du burnout des dirigeants de PME. Revue Française de Gestion, n° 284, pp. 171-189.

Observatoire Amarok / CPME / Harmonie Mutuelle. (2020-2021). Entreprendre sans s'épuiser. Montpellier Business School.

© Orvelan 2026 · See what's solid. Decide well. Go further.

David Martinez (ENG)

Founder Orvelan

David Martinez is the founder of Orvelan. After 25 years of observing and transforming organizations from the inside, across international groups, high-growth environments and periods of major change, he now helps SME and mid-sized company leaders better understand how their organizations really work, so they can make clearer decisions. See what is solid. Decide with clarity. Go further.