Written by: David Carneal – Digital Efficiency Consulting Group – DECG
Read Time: 3 min
When people do not follow a process, organizations often reach for the same explanations. They were not trained well enough. They did not read the instructions. They are resistant to change. They need another reminder.
Sometimes those explanations are correct. Sometimes the process itself is the problem.
The distinction matters because the wrong diagnosis creates the wrong response. If a customer avoids self-service because an exception cannot be explained clearly, another tutorial will not help. If employees maintain a spreadsheet because the enterprise system makes critical information difficult to retrieve, telling them to stop using the spreadsheet does not make the information easier to find.
When hundreds or thousands of people independently choose the same alternate path, treating the behavior as a people problem becomes increasingly difficult to defend.
Improvement Requires Humility
Organizations invest heavily in technology, documentation, process design, and training. That investment can make it emotionally and politically difficult to admit that the result still creates friction. The more expensive the solution was, the stronger the temptation to defend it.
But a process does not become effective because it was expensive, carefully planned, or approved by a large committee. It becomes effective when people can use it to accomplish the intended outcome reliably.
Customers are not trying to respect your implementation history. Employees are not thinking about how much the system cost. They are trying to complete the work in front of them.
Three Questions Before Adding More Training
- Do people understand the intended process?
- Are they still choosing an alternate path after they understand it?
- What does the alternate path accomplish better?
If the first answer is no, training may be the right response. If the first answer is yes and the behavior continues, the investigation should move toward workflow design.
This is where perspective matters. From the organization's perspective, the alternate path may look inefficient or uncontrolled. From the user's perspective, it may be the only practical way to handle uncertainty, exceptions, missing information, or time pressure. Neither perspective automatically tells the whole story.
The useful work happens when those perspectives are compared instead of one being dismissed.
The strongest organizations treat repeated deviation as feedback. They observe it, ask why it exists, measure the impact, and refine the process when reality demonstrates a better path. That does not mean surrendering standards. It means making sure the standard still serves the work.
A process should not win an argument against the people using it. It should help them succeed.
Blaming the user also creates a convenient organizational escape hatch. If the problem is training, resistance, or discipline, the underlying design does not have to be questioned. That can feel safer, particularly when the workflow was recently redesigned or the technology behind it was expensive. But comfort is not evidence. Repeated behavior is.
The useful distinction is between inability and unwillingness. If people cannot follow the process because they do not understand it, improve the training. If they understand it and repeatedly choose another path because that path handles reality better, improve the workflow. Mixing those two problems together wastes time and usually frustrates everyone involved.
CTA: The next time someone says, "They just need to follow the process," pause before adding another reminder. Verify whether the process deserves to be followed exactly as designed.