Written by: David Carneal – Digital Efficiency Consulting Group – DECG
Read Time: 3 min
In the fictional Westbridge Distribution Group, leadership looked at the business and saw a company that was profitable, keeping customers, and shipping orders. Customer service looked at the same company and saw missing information, corrections, and approval chasing. The warehouse saw interruptions. Finance saw controls being bent. Sales saw exceptions that protected relationships and revenue.
The interesting part is that none of those views had to be wrong. A workflow can produce a successful outcome while creating a ridiculous amount of hidden work on the way there. That is where operational conversations get slippery. Everyone brings real evidence to the table, but the evidence comes from a different seat.
The conference room has a different window
Management usually sees outcomes: revenue, service levels, customer retention, throughput, margin, and whether the order ultimately shipped. Those measures matter. They are also a summary of what happened, not a recording of everything required to make it happen.
Employees see the route. They see the missing field that has to be found, the person who must be messaged, the report nobody fully trusts, the manual approval that appears every afternoon, and the quiet rule that says a certain customer is handled differently. Those details rarely survive the trip into an executive dashboard.
Conflict is often incomplete information wearing a tie
When departments disagree about a workflow, the reflex is to decide who has the better explanation. That can turn a process discussion into a courtroom. Customer service says the warehouse is late. The warehouse says changes arrived after picking started. Sales says the change was necessary for the customer. Finance says the account needed review. Congratulations, everyone has evidence and nobody has the whole system.
A better question is the one used in the Westbridge story: What if all of you are right? That question changes the objective from defending a department to reconstructing the workflow.
Run a five-minute perspective check
- Ask management what a successful transaction looks like and what metrics prove it.
- Ask employees where the work waits, gets corrected, or leaves the official system.
- Ask each department what it believes causes the delay and what evidence supports that belief.
- Ask what the customer experiences, especially when an exception occurs.
- Compare the answers before discussing solutions.
If the perspectives align, you have useful validation. If they do not, you have found a place worth examining. The disagreement is not automatically a people problem. It may be the first visible sign that the workflow contains multiple realities.
Clarity is cheaper than choosing sides
The expensive move is to respond to one perspective in isolation. Add staff because customer service is overloaded. Add an approval because finance is worried. Add automation because management sees slow cycle time. Each action can solve a local symptom while making the end-to-end workflow heavier.
Before changing the system, build the shared picture. The workflow is not owned by the loudest department, the most senior person, or the prettiest dashboard. It is the combined path the work actually travels.
CTA: Pick one workflow that creates recurring debate. Ask three groups to describe it separately, then compare the answers. Do not solve anything in the first meeting. Just find where reality splits.