In every organisation there comes a moment when someone says: “We need a process.” They are right: processes are the invisible infrastructure that allows a group of people to produce repeatable results without having to reinvent themselves every day. Without processes, every activity starts from scratch; with processes, energy shifts from organising to executing, and in the best cases from simply executing to improving. The problem is not the process itself but who is asked to build it.
The organisational paradox: why companies entrust process design to the wrong people.
Two ways of looking at the world
Cognitive psychology has identified, among others, a perceptual filter that influences how people approach tasks: some are more inclined to follow procedures, others to think in terms of freely available options. Every person is both at once, with preferences that also vary according to context. (Charvet, 1997).
Those who think predominantly in terms of procedures look for the sequence: what is step one, what is step two, what is the right way to do this. They find security in repeatability, in a clear path, in the absence of ambiguity. Faced with a task, the first question they ask themselves is “how is it done?”. Once they have found the answer, they apply it with discipline and consistency.
Those who think predominantly in terms of options look for alternatives: what could I do differently, what other paths are there, how many ways are there to approach this problem. They find energy in possibility, in exploration, in the freedom to deviate from the prescribed path if they find doing so more appropriate or more stimulating. Faced with a task, the first question they ask themselves is “what could I do?”, and once they have found an answer, they look for another.
Neither approach is better than the other: both are useful and dangerous, at different times and for different purposes. Most organisations often make a systematic mistake: they entrust the building of processes to those who think in terms of procedures.
The logic seems unassailable: who better to design a process than someone methodical, orderly, fond of sequences? The answer is simple and counter-intuitive: almost anyone else.
The builder who becomes a custodian
When someone who thinks in terms of procedures builds a process, they activate three psychological mechanisms that overlap and reinforce one another.
The first is the IKEA effect. Norton, Mochon and Ariely (2012) demonstrated that people attach disproportionate value to what they build with their own hands. A process carefully designed, tested and refined in every detail becomes a source of pride for its creator.
The second is the sunk cost effect. Arkes and Blumer (1985) documented people's tendency to keep investing in something that has already absorbed time, energy and resources, even when the evidence would suggest changing course. Building a process is a significant investment: meetings, analysis, tests, revisions, training. The higher the cost has been, the more the brain resists the idea of having to abandon it or change it radically.
The third mechanism is specific to those who think in terms of procedures: a low tolerance for alternatives. Once the process exists and works, procedural thinking crystallises it. It becomes the way things are done. Not a way but the way. And every proposal for change is perceived not as an opportunity for improvement but as a threat to the stability of the System, a dangerous departure from the standard.
The result is a dynamic observed in thousands of organisations: a process that was perfect when it was created becomes progressively inadequate because nobody has the courage, the inclination or the mindset to question it.
Processes age, and those who love them fail to see it.
No process holds up indefinitely: markets change, technologies evolve, people move on, priorities shift. A process built for a specific context becomes a constraint when that context changes.
In Prospect Theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979), Daniel Kahneman documented a principle that explains why people are so reluctant to change what works: losing something we possess carries twice the psychological weight of gaining something equivalent. Loss aversion is not just about money: it also concerns habits, methods, operational certainties or personal beliefs.
For someone who has built a process and overseen it for years, changing it means losing something. Not a file on a server, but part of their professional identity: “I am the one who built the system that works.” Questioning it means questioning themselves.
Barry Staw (1976), in his work on escalation of commitment in organisations, showed that managers who have personally initiated a project tend to keep investing in it even in the face of clear signs of failure, out of a profoundly human need for internal consistency: I set out on this path, I have staked my credibility on it, so it has to work. The human mind tends to seek completion, and an interrupted project would be something unfinished. The parallel with business processes is direct: the person who designed the process is the last person capable of seeing its limitations.
Those who think in terms of options see what others do not, sometimes all too much.
Someone who thinks in terms of options, faced with the task of designing a process, will do something the procedural thinker does not: continually ask whether there is a different way of doing it. Not because the current way is wrong, but because their brain is programmed to seek alternatives. This characteristic, which is a flaw in the day-to-day execution of a process (the person gets bored, looks for shortcuts, does not follow the procedure to the letter), is an enormous advantage at the design stage.
The options-oriented thinker designs a process already knowing that it is provisional; they become attached not to the structure but to the result that structure must produce. If a better way of achieving the same result emerges tomorrow, they will welcome it as an improvement, not an attack.
There is a second, less obvious advantage: those who think in terms of options tend to design more robust processes, because they build them with edge cases, exceptions and situations in which the standard path does not work already in mind. Not because they are more intelligent, but because their cognitive filter leads them to think in terms of “what if X happened?” long before X happens.
All this comes with significant limitations: a person like this in the wrong part of the company will waste a great deal of time on conjecture, risking a slowdown in operations. That is why they are not the right person to follow their own processes.
The procedural thinker should not be excluded, but placed in the right role.
Here it is essential not to fall into the opposite trap: concluding that those who think in terms of procedures have no use in process management. They most certainly do, at a different stage.
Design requires breadth of vision, the ability to explore alternatives, tolerance for ambiguity, and this is where those who think in terms of options excel. Execution requires discipline, attention to detail, consistency, adherence to the sequence; this is where those who think in terms of procedures excel.
The problem is not people's cognitive filters but assigning the wrong filter to the wrong stage.
An organisation that entrusts process design to those who think in terms of procedures will have rigid, long-lived processes, fiercely defended and progressively inadequate. An organisation that entrusts execution to those who think in terms of options will have well-designed processes applied inconsistently, with constant variations and unpredictable results.
The optimal arrangement is complementarity: the options-oriented thinker designs, the procedural thinker executes, and a structured mechanism for periodic review brings the two back together to update what no longer works.
The right role for the right person
The issue goes beyond processes and touches on a broader management principle: the ability to read people for who they are, not for what they can do on paper.
A CV tells us about technical skills, not cognitive filters. Someone with twenty years of experience in operational management might be the most obvious choice to design a new workflow, and at the same time the worst choice, if their way of thinking leads them to replicate what has always worked in a context that calls for something different.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in his work on flow, demonstrated that people fulfil their greatest potential when the task is aligned with their cognitive characteristics (neither too easy nor too difficult), consistent with the way that person processes information and approaches problems (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Putting an options-oriented thinker to work executing repetitive procedures drains them; putting a procedural thinker to work designing without constraints disorientates them. In both cases the result is the same: a competent person performing below their potential, not because they do not know how to do the job, but because that job does not activate the cognitive resources that make them effective.
The question every organisation should ask itself
Before asking “how do we improve this process?”, there is a more useful question: “who designed it, and who oversees it?”
If the answer is the same person, and that person has been there since the process began, the risk is high. Their brain has built an emotional and cognitive relationship with that process that makes objective assessment almost impossible. The IKEA effect, sunk cost and the procedural filter work together, silently, producing an unshakeable certainty: the process works, the problem lies elsewhere.
The process probably did work; the question is whether it still does. Answering that question requires a different eye, someone who looks at the structure with the freedom of having nothing to defend.
The companies that truly work are not those with the best processes but those that know when it is time to question them, and know whom to ask to do so.