Written by: David Carneal – Digital Efficiency Consulting Group – DECG
Read Time: 3 min
A workaround is not always rebellion. Often it is an employee leaving a trail of breadcrumbs back to the broken part of the process. People build spreadsheets, side lists, email templates, and quiet rituals because the official workflow does not let them finish the work cleanly.
Leaders can treat workarounds as noncompliance, or they can treat them as diagnostic evidence. One approach creates scolding. The other creates improvement. Scolding is cheaper in the moment and more expensive forever.
What Workarounds Reveal
Workarounds usually point to a gap between the documented process and the real process. The system may not capture the right data. The approval route may be too slow. The intake form may be incomplete. The report may be trusted by nobody except the person who made it, and even they have doubts.
- Spreadsheet outside the system: the system may not support the real decision.
- Email approval: the formal approval path may be too slow or unclear.
- Manual reconciliation: systems may not share trustworthy data.
- Private checklist: procedure may be incomplete or hard to use.
The Workaround Interview
Do not begin with "Why are you doing this wrong?" That opens the trapdoor. Begin with curiosity. Ask what the workaround helps them accomplish, what would break if they stopped, and what the official process does not provide.
Ask these four questions:
- What problem does this workaround solve?
- How often do you use it?
- What risk does it create?
- What would the official workflow need to do so this workaround could disappear?
Decide: Adopt, Fix, or Retire
Some workarounds are clever improvements that should become part of the official process. Some are warning lights showing where systems or ownership need repair. Some are risky habits that should be retired once the root cause is fixed.
- Adopt it if it improves quality and can be standardized.
- Fix the root cause if the workaround compensates for a process gap.
- Retire it if it creates risk, duplicate records, or hidden dependency.
Workarounds are not the enemy. Hidden workarounds are. Make them visible and they become useful diagnostic material instead of operational folklore.
Do Not Romanticize Every Workaround
Some workarounds are brilliant. Some are duct tape with a password. The diagnostic job is to understand the problem they solve and the risk they create. A spreadsheet may save time today while creating duplicate records, version confusion, or dependency on one person who knows where the bodies, formulas, and hidden tabs are buried.
The useful move is to bring the workaround into daylight without punishing the person who created it. Employees rarely build side systems because they crave extra administrative hobbies. They build them because the official path is missing something they need to serve the customer or finish the work.
- Thank the person for showing the workaround.
- Identify the business need underneath it.
- Decide whether the need belongs in the process, the system, or the training material.
- Remove the workaround only after the official path can replace its value.
The New Employee Challenge
Imagine a new employee joins tomorrow and has to complete this workflow without help.
Which steps would make them pause?
- Unwritten rules
- Informal approvals
- Tribal knowledge
- “That’s just how we do it” workarounds
Every step that requires explanation is a candidate for improvement.
CTA: Ask one employee to show you the unofficial tool they use to get work done. Bring curiosity. Leave the pitchfork in the drawer.