Organizations Are Full Of Elevens

Eleven is a design failure.

We count:

Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen...

Then suddenly:

Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three.

If we were inventing English today, would anyone create "eleven" and "twelve" on purpose? Probably not.

And don’t even get me started on French.

Quatre-vingt-dix. OMG STOP.

It should be TENTY-ONE. Not eleven. TENTY-TWO. Not twelve. TENTY-THREE. Not thirteen.

I know I sound like Lewis Black, but I’ll happily die on this hill.

It’s not really about numbers, though. It's about inherited systems.

Organizations have "elevens" too.

Processes everyone follows because "that's how we've always done it." Approval chains nobody remembers creating. Reports nobody reads. Meetings that continue because a recurring calendar invite has quietly survived three reorganizations.

Every organization inherits decisions. The work is figuring out which ones are still serving a purpose.

The question isn’t only why it ended up this way. History usually has an answer. The better question is whether we’d intentionally design it this way today.

When I’m diagnosing an organizational challenge and ask why, the first answer is almost always a history lesson. Context is fine, but that’s not what I’m asking.

History explains. It doesn’t justify.

I’m not asking for the origin story of this absolutely insane intake process. I’m asking what it is actually doing for the organization, and for the people it serves.

Organizations are full of elevens. You stop seeing them because they've just become how you count.

I want to challenge you, today, to pause when you hit an eleven. Ask why. Not why it began. Why it continues.

Meanwhile, I’ll be over here teaching my kid to count to tenty-one.