Loose Shunting: The Management Style That Derails Teams

I once watched a wagon hurtle toward disaster — and no, this wasn’t a dramatic moment from a Bollywood film or a Netflix thriller. It was a Tuesday morning leadership meeting.

Let me explain,

In my early consulting days, I worked with a mid-sized tech company that prided itself on being “agile, lean, and non-hierarchical.” Translation: everyone was doing everything, and no one was owning anything. It sounded sexy in a pitch deck, but the reality? A hot mess on wheels.

That’s when the analogy hit me like a rogue freight car: this company was practicing “loose shunting” — not in a railway yard, but in its boardroom.

What the Heck is Loose Shunting?

In railway terms, it’s the act of giving a wagon a gentle push and letting it roll into place, hoping it’ll stop at the right spot. There’s no engine pulling it. No brakes. Just momentum.Sound familiar? That’s exactly how many managers delegate.

• “Can you take care of this?”

• “Loop in legal and see what they say.”

• “We need a deck by Friday — just pull together something.”

Push. Roll. Hope. Repeat.

🚦The Case of the Vanishing Accountability

At this tech firm, I observed the marketing head hand off the go-to-market plan to the sales head. The sales head assumed ops would figure it out. Ops, predictably, thought finance would fund it. And finance? They were still waiting for an approved budget from marketing.

Everyone had touched the wagon.No one had owned the track.

Deadlines passed. Blame circled. A million Slack threads later, the project stalled.

💥Loose Shunting in Management Looks Like This:

• Delegation without direction — “Just get it done” isn’t a strategy.

• Accountability ping-pong — Everyone’s in motion, but nothing’s moving forward.

• Firefighting as a lifestyle — Problems are handled when they explode, never before.

• A culture of plausible deniability — “I thought you were handling it.”

🧩The Leadership Lesson Hiding in Plain Sight

If you’re leading a team, ask yourself:

• Do you assign tasks or outcomes?

• Do your team members know where their wagon is supposed to stop?

• Do they have brakes? Signals? A sidetrack plan?

• Are you empowering them — or just pushing them off the platform?

Loose shunting isn’t just inefficient. It’s dangerous.

It fosters confusion, burnout, and political undercurrents disguised as “collaboration.”

🛠️ So What’s that I can do ?

Let’s lay some proper tracks.

1.Define the Destination

Before you assign, clarify what success looks like. Not just “get it done,” but “deliver X by Y, considering A and B.”

2.Assign the Engine, Not Just the Wagon

Give your team ownership and authority. Don’t just push work — enable them to pull it with purpose.

3.Create Signalling Systems

Weekly check-ins, transparent trackers, and aligned KPIs aren’t micromanagement — they’re railway signals. Use them.

4.Reward Braking, Too

Celebrate people who pause to ask if the wagon’s on the wrong track. They’re not slowing things down — they’re saving you from a derailment.

🎤 My Verdict

Loose shunting may have worked in colonial-era railway yards. But in today’s fast-paced, interconnected workplaces, it’s a recipe for chaos.

Your team doesn’t need another gentle nudge. They need direction, structure, and — most of all — clarity.Because in the end, it’s not about how many wagons you move.It’s about whether you actually got the train where it needed to go.

Want to see how much loose shunting is happening in your team?

Ask one question at your next stand-up:

“Who owns this?” And wait.

If the room goes silent…You’ve got your answer.

It Is What It Is`