The Workaround Became the Process

Somewhere along the way we started confusing “the work got done” with “the process works.”

Those are not the same thing.

I've worked in enough warehouses and operations to know that people are remarkably good at keeping bad processes alive.

Give somebody a broken system long enough and they'll build a spreadsheet. Give them bad inventory long enough and they'll start keeping the real number in their head. Give them a purchasing process that takes too long and they'll figure out who to call directly. Give them a receiving problem and somebody will quietly fix it every afternoon.

And pretty soon management looks around and says, “Seems to be working.”

Sure.

In the same way a bucket under a leaking pipe means the plumbing works.

Workarounds aren't necessarily bad. Sometimes they're exactly what gets you through Tuesday. Solve the immediate problem. Keep the customer moving. Keep production going.

The problem is when nobody goes back.

The temporary spreadsheet becomes the system. The person who knows the trick becomes the process. The exception becomes normal. Eventually we start writing procedures around the workaround instead of fixing what made the workaround necessary.

That's how you end up with a bucket under the leak and “empty bucket” quietly added to somebody's job.

What are your people doing every day that only exists because nobody ever went back and fixed the original problem?