Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences:
Organizations often introduce new systems and processes without adequately involving the people who understand how work actually gets done, only to interpret subsequent workarounds and inconsistent adoption as employee resistance. Designing with people rather than simply for them brings practical knowledge and experience into decisions about what needs to change, improving the likelihood that systems will support both organizational objectives and the realities of everyday work.
Organizations invest considerable time and resources in designing systems intended to improve how work gets done. Processes are documented, responsibilities assigned, technologies introduced and procedures standardized, all with the expectation that operations will become more efficient, consistent and reliable.
Yet even the most carefully designed system can fail to produce the intended results.
Employees develop workarounds, managers continue making decisions that have supposedly been delegated, and new technologies are used differently from how their designers anticipated.
When these situations arise, attention frequently turns to the people involved. They may be described as resistant to change, unwilling to follow procedures or insufficiently committed to the organization’s objectives.
The million dollar question is – how much attention was given to understanding their work, experiences and perspectives before the system was designed?
Sometimes the problem isn’t that people are unwilling to work within the system. It’s that the system was designed without adequately understanding the people expected to make it work.
When System Design Overlooks Reality
Organizational systems are often developed around what management believes should happen. Processes are mapped, responsibilities defined and performance expectations established. The objective is to create a consistent way of operating that supports the organization’s needs.
But there can be a significant gap between how work is formally described and how it actually happens.
Employees regularly encounter situations that don’t fit neatly into established procedures. They exercise judgement, coordinate informally with colleagues, respond to unexpected demands and make adjustments that allow work to continue. Much of this knowledge may never appear in a process document or management report.
Imagine a company introducing a new customer relationship management system to improve the tracking of client interactions. The software has been carefully selected, staff members have received training, and management expects greater visibility into customer relationships. Several months later, the system isn’t being used consistently.
Management concludes that employees need additional training or closer supervision. But an investigation reveals that entering information requires duplicating work already completed elsewhere, certain fields don’t reflect how customer relationships are actually managed, and employees find the system cumbersome when responding to urgent requests. They have developed informal workarounds that allow them to serve customers more efficiently.
From management’s perspective, employees aren’t following the system. From the employees’ perspective, the system isn’t adequately supporting their work.
Both observations may be accurate.
The question is whether the organization understands why that gap exists and what might have been learned had employees been involved earlier in the design process.
The Knowledge That Rarely Makes It Into the Design
The people who perform the work often understand aspects of the organization that aren’t immediately visible to those designing its systems. They know where delays occur, which procedures create unnecessary complications, how departments actually coordinate their activities and what customers experience when established processes don’t work as intended. They may also understand why certain informal arrangements have developed and what would happen if those arrangements were eliminated.
This knowledge isn’t always captured through conventional requirements gathering or management consultations. A process may appear unnecessarily complicated until someone explains that it accommodates an important customer need. An informal communication channel may seem inefficient until its role in resolving urgent issues becomes clear.
That doesn’t mean every existing practice should be preserved. Some arrangements may be outdated, inefficient or expose the organization to unnecessary risks. but understanding why they exist provides a more reliable basis for deciding what should change.
The people closest to the work can often explain not only what happens, but why it happens that way.
Excluding that knowledge can result in systems that are technically sound but poorly suited to the environment in which they must operate.
Participation Is More Than Consultation
Organizations frequently describe their approach to change as participative because employees have been informed about proposed changes, invited to provide feedback or included in training sessions. These activities can be valuable, but they aren’t necessarily the same as involving people in shaping the decisions themselves.
There is a difference between asking employees to comment on a system that has already been selected and involving them in understanding the problem the system is supposed to address. When participation begins after the major decisions have been made, employees may have limited opportunity to question the assumptions guiding the proposed solution. They can suggest adjustments, but the underlying approach may already be settled.
Meaningful involvement begins much earlier.
It includes examining how work actually happens, understanding the experiences of those affected, identifying what is working and establishing which problems genuinely require intervention. It also means being prepared to discover that the proposed system may not be the most appropriate response.
This doesn’t require every employee to participate in every decision. Nor does it mean that management must accept every recommendation. Leaders remain responsible for making decisions, balancing competing interests and ensuring that organizational requirements are met…but those decisions can be better informed when the people who understand the work are involved before the solution has been determined.
People Shape Systems, and Systems Shape People
There is another reason human involvement matters. Organizational systems don’t simply establish how work should be performed. They also influence how people behave. A company may encourage collaboration while maintaining performance measures that reward departments for achieving individual targets. Another may promote employee empowerment while requiring senior management approval for routine decisions.
In both cases, the organization’s arrangements may encourage behaviors that contradict its stated intentions. Employees learn what is rewarded, what attracts criticism and what they need to do to accomplish their work. Over time, these experiences influence how they operate, regardless of what formal policies prescribe.
Leadership behavior also contributes to this process. A manager who repeatedly overrides employee decisions may unintentionally encourage dependence. A leader who requests honest feedback but reacts defensively to criticism may discourage people from raising concerns.
These behaviors are not separate from the system. They help determine how it operates.
Understanding the relationship between human behavior and organizational arrangements is essential to designing systems that support the outcomes we want to achieve.
Designing With People Changes What We Understand
Involving people in system design does more than improve acceptance of change. It can change the organization’s understanding of what needs to change in the first place.
Employees may reveal that an apparent performance problem is connected to conflicting priorities, unclear authority or processes that create unnecessary work. Customers may identify difficulties that aren’t visible in internal performance reports. Managers may recognize that their own practices are contributing to the conditions they want to improve.
These findings can challenge the assumptions on which the proposed intervention was based. They may lead to a different system, a revised process, a change in responsibilities or the recognition that the original problem requires further investigation.
Of course, participation doesn’t guarantee that every decision will be correct or that implementation will be straightforward. Organizational requirements, technical limitations, financial considerations and competing priorities still need to be addressed.
Involving people in understanding and designing change, reduces the likelihood that decisions will be based solely on how leaders believe the organization operates.
The objective should never be simply to develop a system and then persuade people to use it. It should be to understand what the organization needs, how work is actually accomplished and what arrangements will enable people to perform effectively.
People should not continually have to compensate for systems designed without sufficient understanding of the realities of their work.
When we design with people rather than simply for them, we improve not only the likelihood that a system will be accepted, but also the quality of the decisions that determine what gets designed.
Strategic Reflection Prompt
When designing or improving systems in your organization, are the people who understand how the work actually gets done helping to shape those decisions, or are they simply expected to adapt to what has already been decided?
I’m Giselle Hudson, The Pre-Fixer™.
For nearly three decades, I’ve worked with business owners and leaders across the Caribbean who carry important decisions largely on their own, often when problems keep returning, solutions fall short, or implementation stalls.
When I ask business owners what problem they can’t seem to solve, the answer is usually “people.” So I ask them to tell me more, because people and businesses are rarely as simple as they first appear.
I help them understand what’s really causing the problem before they spend more trying to fix it. And where needed, I help design the solution and guide their teams to put it into practice.
Get Clarity before the Fix.
What are you trying to make sense of right now?
