When you work in an organization, big or small, you will inevitably encounter a process that doesn’t make sense. Maybe it’s inefficient, or uses an old, outdated technology or is simply illogical. You will wonder why the organization continues in this path when there’s clearly a better way! The answer is not always straightforward.
The general intuition is that it’s some form of Organizational Inertia: People have been doing things a certain way for years and its works “good enough”. Most people in the company recognize there is better way, but the effort to change the process would not be worth the improvements from the new process. It’s only when there’s major issues, or new leadership with lots of energy, that enough force can be applied to break Organizational Inertia and implement the better way. This is probably the explanation for the majority of cases. However there can also be a Strategic Reason for that an organizations to move slowly when considering a change to a seemingly inefficient process: they need time to allow the hidden value in the process to emerge.
Think of a process almost like a tradition. While one may argue traditions exist because of cultural inertia, there’s another perspective that would argues traditions carry non-obvious values. This is generally the driver of the Conservative approach to change: we’re not always aware of the complete value or benefit a tradition delivers, so we should be slow to change it. You could say there’s a kind of natural selection / evolution for a society with regard to tradition. If a tradition has accompanied a society’s success, then it will continue to survive. If a culture adopts a certain adopted a process or institution, it might be because its the best option and time tested, even if there are obvious flaws.
So too with company process. As shitty as one may be, it could be the best option and time tested. The justification for the process might live be hidden, but material edge cases or non-obvious downstream impacts of a process. So being slow to make changes provides the organization with time to undercover some of these things. Time for the people involved to raise their hands or time to do research on the potential impact. Time to understand if the results of the process were delivered as result of or in spite the bad parts.
Intergalactic Dance 