Can't and Won't

There is a difference between cannot and will not. Most organisations spend a great deal of energy pretending otherwise, because the alternative is admitting that somewhere, someone chose this.

“We cannot reopen the validation.” The paperwork has been signed[1]. The process was followed. These things are true, but they are not natural forces. Nobody chained the validation to the floor. It could be reopened. What is actually being said is: we will not reopen it, because doing so would create more problems for us than leaving it closed creates for you.

“We cannot change the assessment schedule.” The timetable was set months ago. Moving it would be disruptive. Again, true. But timetables are not laws of thermodynamics. What is actually being said is: we will not change it, because the disruption to our systems would outweigh the benefit to the people currently drowning in it.

“We cannot fund that.” The budget was allocated. Priorities were set. And budgets are moral documents dressed up as spreadsheets[2]. What is actually being said is: we will not fund that, because we chose to fund other things instead, and we do not want to defend that choice. We don’t agree on what’s important and ‘I HAVE THE POWEEEEEERRRRRRRRR!’.

The shift from cannot to will not gets difficult for those who think they have the power because it points the finger. If something truly cannot be done, you are off the hook. Nobody blames you for failing at the impossible. But if you will not do something, you are making a choice, and choices come with accountability attached. So institutions translate will not into cannot until nobody remembers the difference.

Most of the people saying cannot genuinely believe it. They have internalised the constraints so thoroughly that the choice no longer feels like one. The budget feels like gravity. The process feels like a legal requirement. The timetable feels like a fact of nature. That is how systems protect themselves. They make their own decisions disappear into the architecture, so that no one person has to own them.

But the budget was allocated by someone. The process was designed by someone. The timetable was agreed by someone. Somewhere, at some point, a person could have decided differently. Until you point to that person, and highlight the choice they are making, you are not having an honest conversation about what is possible.

Cannot and will not are not the same thing. Pretending they are is how accountability dissolves.

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[1] Usually in a binder that nobody has looked at since. But the binder exists, and that is what matters.

[2] The phrase ‘moral document’ sounds dramatic. It is not. It just means that every pound in a budget landed there because someone decided it should go there instead of somewhere else. A budget is a robust indicator of values, in many ways.