From Garage to Gridlock - When Process Enables vs. When It Controls

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From Garage to Gridlock - When Process Enables vs. When It Controls

Podcast Episode · Process Debt · 08/08/2025 · 19m

If you’ve ever watched an airport open the ropes when nobody’s in line, you’ve seen what good process feels like. Quiet. Obvious. Almost invisible.

That’s the point—enabling process doesn’t ask for applause. It just gets you to the gate.

Lately I’ve been thinking about Steve Jobs telling the story of early Apple. In the garage, he knew the exact cost of each Apple I because he touched every part. Then the business scaled. Accounting started “truing up” costs quarterly because the system couldn’t see reality in real time. Jobs’ instinct wasn’t to accept the ritual; it was to ask why and then design a way to see again.

We all live that shift. When things are small, we’re intimate with every part. Success adds distance. And somewhere in that distance, a helpful checklist turns into a ritual we can’t explain, a TSA serpentine with no passengers.

Here’s the working distinction I use:

• Bureaucratic process is fear-based. It survives because “that’s how we do it,” because someone made a mistake in 2019, because a PMO template requires twelve tabs. It focuses on control when clarity is missing.

• Enabling process is purpose-based. It starts with a clear outcome, then defines the minimum boundaries, handoffs, and feedback needed to get there with less friction the next time.

A home project reminded me how stark this is. Trades on a job site have crisp scope, crisp handoffs, and crisp decisions. When something changes—wrong light on the wrong circuit—you don’t write a memo. You move the light. The builder cares that the outcome matches the plan; the path is local, fast, and owned.

If most knowledge work feels nothing like that, it’s because our scopes are fuzzy and our decisions are diffused. We mistake meetings for momentum. We debate galvanized vs. non-galvanized screws without agreeing on what we’re building.

The turn: When variability is high and boundaries are vague, process gets rigid to compensate. The rope maze grows. Not because anyone’s evil—because no one agreed on where the line should go.

So what does enabling process actually look like?

• Outcome first, ritual second. “Build a deck I can enjoy this fall” beats “follow the 27-point status template.” Define “done,” then design the smallest set of steps to get there consistently.

• Boundaries unlock speed. A good RACI on paper isn’t the point; a shared understanding of “what’s inside my span of control vs. influence” is. Make it explicit: what decisions I own, what I prepare for you, and where I’ll never cross the tape.

• Local authority, global visibility. The person closest to the work fixes the light; the system still sees the change. In software: give teams the power to resolve defects and repay small process debt in-flow, while telemetry keeps finance, risk, and leadership informed.

• Self-service by default. Documentation, FAQs, runbooks, and decision trees are not “nice to haves.” They’re how you say “no” without blocking and “yes” without meetings. The smoothest teams I know invest here relentlessly.

• Review the rope maze regularly. Every quarter, pick one legacy step and ask “What risk does this actually mitigate?” If the answer is a story from a prior century—or silence—cut it.

A last note on RACIs: they look fantastic in decks and fail quietly in practice. If your RACI doesn’t change behavior (“Oh, I don’t make that call; I escalate” or “I own this decision and here’s why”), it’s theater. Replace the grid with three living artifacts: a one-line outcome, a boundary list, and a visible queue that shows handoffs in motion.

Good process makes the right thing easy and the wrong thing awkward. Everything else is decoration.

Process Debt Truth: When purpose is unclear, rituals multiply. Clarify the “why,” and half your “must-do” process disappears.