Oh, we’re sooo good at working around our organizations.
We should all have #Workarounder next to our job title.
Chasing approvals.
Calling someone who knows someone.
Finding another way because the magnificent new tool doesn’t quite do the job.
And somehow, we get it done.
Our ingenuity keeps the work going.
It can also hide where the organization needs to change.
Most rules started with a good intention.
Safety. Quality. Consistency. Accountability.
Those things matter.
But ten individually sensible rules don’t necessarily make one sensible system.
When we discover a workaround, we have a choice.
We can close it and wait for the next one.
Or we can sit down with the people doing the work and ask:
What are you trying to achieve?
What makes the approved route difficult?
What risk does the rule protect us from?
How can we make good work possible while keeping that protection?
Sometimes the answer is a clearer process.
Sometimes it’s a missing tool.
Sometimes we need to change who can decide — or reconsider the rule itself.
We need to understand which.
A workaround is a clue: there may be a gap between how we designed the work and what the work actually
requires.
Let’s get curious before we get corrective.
I have to remind myself of that almost every day.
My first impulse often knows the way to drama.
Curiosity helps me find out what’s actually going on.
We say we want empowerment.
So what are we actively doing to prevent it?
Then comes the work of leadership:
Bring the right people together.
Agree what needs to change.
Take responsibility for changing it.
Check whether it actually helps.
Did we remove the need for the workaround?
Did we preserve the safety and quality we need?
Are people more able to do great work?
A better workaround is still a workaround.
My ambition is to make it unnecessary.
Imagine what people could do with more of that ingenuity available for customers, problems worth solving
and ideas worth trying.
Perhaps that’s our Monday question:
What can we change today so that our teams go home saying:
“Today went really well.
Things keep getting better.”
These reflections draw on my experience across industries, roles and organizations — including my own choices as a leader.