The cursor is a pulsing needle in my eye. I just cleared my browser cache-11 minutes of history gone, 21 saved passwords vaporized-in a desperate, sweating attempt to make the ‘Submit’ button actually do something. It didn’t. It just sat there, gray and smug, like a tombstone for my Tuesday afternoon. I’m staring at a screen that tells me I have 31 errors in my expense report, but it won’t highlight where they are. This is the promised land of digital transformation, and it tastes like copper and frustration.
The Shackles Move Faster
We were told that moving to the cloud would set us free. Instead, we’ve just moved the shackles to a faster server. The irony isn’t lost on me as I look at the pile of paper on my desk. To finish this ‘digital’ report, I have to print the final summary, sign it with a blue pen-specifically blue, because the 1 accounting clerk doesn’t trust black ink-and then scan it back into a system that cost the company $1,000,001. We haven’t changed the way we work; we’ve just added high-definition cameras to watch us work badly.
João C. knows this rhythm better than anyone. He’s a driving instructor who has spent 31 years watching people panic over simple mechanics. He’s a man of levers and gears, someone who understands that if the steering rack is broken, polishing the steering wheel won’t help you take the corner.
– João C., Process Simplicity Advocate
The Digital Cowpath Optimization
We are obsessed with paving the cowpaths. In urban planning, a cowpath is a route created by the natural, messy movement of feet across a field. It’s rarely the shortest or most logical path; it’s just the one people took because there was a rock in the way 51 years ago. In business, we take these illogical, legacy-burdened workflows and instead of asking why they exist, we pour digital concrete over them. We automate the rock. We optimize the detour.
Time Per Unit: 4 minutes
Time Per Unit: 3 seconds (Loading time included)
Take the standard hiring process. I recently watched a manager fill out 31 web forms to request a new junior designer. Those forms generated a PDF, which was then emailed to 11 separate stakeholders for ‘approval.’ If the system was actually designed for efficiency, it would have been a 1-click authorization based on budget availability. But the organization was so afraid of losing control that they digitized their fear instead of their function.
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We are documenting our own misery in real-time.
– Observation from the Field
Utility Over Ego
This is why I find myself returning to the basics of actual utility. When you look at how a system should work, you look for the path of least resistance. You look for the moment where the technology disappears and only the result remains. If I want a new phone, I don’t want to navigate 101 layers of ‘enterprise solutioning.’ I want to see the product, understand its value, and get it.
This is why a platform like
feels like such a relief compared to the internal systems we are forced to use. It’s built for the user’s end goal, not for the internal ego of a department head who wants to see 21 different analytics charts about a single purchase.
Most organizations are currently suffering from what I call ‘Digital Bloat Syndrome.’ We add features to hide the fact that the core process is decaying. We add 11 more mandatory fields to a form because we don’t trust the data from the previous 11. We build dashboards to monitor the inefficiency of other dashboards. It’s a fractal of wasted time, all rendered in beautiful, 4K resolution.
The Broken Feedback Loop
Action: Press ‘Submit’
Immediate physical input.
Result: Queued Email (31 Hours Later)
Feedback loop completely disconnected.
I remember talking to João C. about the concept of ‘feedback.’ In a car, if you press the brake, the car slows down. There is a 1-to-1 relationship between action and result. In the digital workplace, that link is broken. You press ‘submit’ and you wait 31 hours for an automated email that tells you your request has been ‘queued.’ The feedback loop is so long that by the time you realize you made a mistake, you’ve already made 11 more just like it.
The Guilt of Subtraction
I’ve made this mistake myself. 21 months ago, I tried to ‘automate’ my filing system. I bought scanners, subscribed to three different cloud services, and set up 11 complex rules for auto-sorting my receipts. I spent 51 hours setting it all up. Within a month, I was just throwing the receipts into a shoebox again, but now I felt guilty about it because I was paying $31 a month for the ‘privilege’ of not using the software I’d bought. I had digitized the mess, but the mess was still a mess.
Automation Setup Effort vs. Actual Use
Setup: 51 Hours
True transformation is an act of subtraction, not addition. It’s the courage to look at a 121-page policy manual and realize that 111 of those pages only exist to cover someone’s back in a scenario that hasn’t happened since 1981. It’s the willingness to let João C. put down the tablet and actually watch the student’s hands on the wheel. Technology should be the wind at our backs, not the sand in our gears.
The Ultimate Inefficiency
As I sit here, finally having successfully cleared my cache and re-logged into the system for the 31st time today, I realize that the ‘Submit’ button is still gray. I forgot to fill out the 1 field that asks for my middle name in uppercase. There is no logical reason for this field to exist. The company already has my birth certificate, my passport, and my blood type on file. But 21 years ago, a database administrator decided that middle names were the key to security, and so, here we are.
I’ll fill it out. I’ll print it. I’ll sign it in blue ink. I’ll scan it. And 11 days from now, someone will click ‘Approve’ without looking at it. The process is faster now, certainly. We can now complete an illogical, wasteful task in half the time it used to take. We are more efficient at being useless than we have ever been in human history.
Is this really what we wanted? We’ve built a world where the machines are humming, the data is flowing, and the $6,000,001 investments are being amortized. But if you look closely at the people in the cubicles, or the driving instructors on the road, you’ll see the same tired eyes. We didn’t fix the work. We just made the brokenness harder to see behind the bright, glowing screens. Maybe the next time we decide to ‘transform,’ we should start by turning the computers off and asking if the process deserves to exist at all. But that would be too simple, wouldn’t it? It’s much easier to just buy more concrete.
