Don’t bureaucratize around management failure

Last week I shared five sensemaking principles for goal setting in organizations. I feel strongly about all of them, but the one I’d shout from the mountaintops is the fourth:

Structure should scaffold leadership, not substitute for it.

The sub-header for this principle is: If managers and leaders can’t create clarity without another template, deadline, or system requirement, the answer may not be more process.

Or, more bluntly: Don’t bureaucratize around management failure.

Before getting into what I mean by that, it’s worth acknowledging why organizations add process in the first place. In talent practices like goal setting, promotions, performance management, and compensation, the reasons are usually pretty understandable:

• Inconsistency in how managers make talent decisions

• Unclear role or performance expectations

• Lack of fairness (real or perceived) in talent decisions

• Weak manager capability

• A need for greater accountability or compliance

• Legal or organizational risk

None of those are trivial problems. And sometimes more structure really is the right answer.

But sometimes it becomes the easy button: If we make every manager complete this form, follow this workflow, or meet this deadline, at least we’ll know the expectation was met.

So when is process actually the right answer, and when is it masking weak management?

If expectations are genuinely unclear, more structure can help. If managers don’t know what good looks like, clearer standards, guidance, or decision criteria could be exactly what’s needed.

But if managers know the standard and won’t apply it, another form probably isn’t going to fix that. If criteria are clear but managers avoid the hard calls, that’s not a process-design problem. If employees aren’t getting feedback because managers lack skill (or courage), a mandatory check-in may create completion without improving the outcome.

This is where adding process often backfires.

Good managers get burdened with controls designed for weak managers.

Weak managers learn to satisfy the process rather than improve the behavior.

Leaders mistake completion data for evidence that the underlying practice is working.

Employees experience the system as performative.

And eventually, people can’t tell which parts of the process actually matter—and often decide that none of it does.

Think of it this way: Process can make management failure less visible by making compliance and completion more visible.

Here’s the truth: I love a good process. I’ve spent hundreds of hours over the course of my career designing talent processes, teaching HR teams and managers how to use them, and tracking whether they actually happened (I also love a good dashboard). I’m not arguing that organizations should abandon structure.

I am arguing that we should be much more disciplined about why we’re adding it.

Before adding another form, workflow, review, or requirement, ask:

1. What problem are we trying to solve?

2. Is this a process problem, or a management problem?

3. What behavior are we trying to create (or stop)?

4. Will this new step actually change that behavior, or just make completion easier to track?’

5. What can we remove before adding something else?

If the real issue is manager capability, judgment, or accountability, address that directly.

Clarify the expectation. Give the feedback. Build the skill. Hold the line.

Because every time we add process to compensate for weak management, we make the system heavier for everyone—and make the actual management problem easier to avoid.

Structure should support good management. It should not become an easy button to avoid managing.