When Complexity Isn’t Rigor: The Cost of Processes Without Trust
My cursor hovers over the ‘submit’ button, a digital precipice I’ve approached 17 times in the last two weeks. It’s for a $47 software subscription, a tool I’m convinced will shave at least 7 minutes off a recurring task each day. The form, three full digital pages, feels like an archaeological dig into the company’s administrative past. Each field is a relic, demanding information no human will ever truly process, but the system, in its infinite wisdom, requires. Four people, collectively billing north of $577 an hour, will review this request. Not for its strategic merit, mind you, but for its adherence to a series of checkboxes designed to prevent some long-forgotten, minor indiscretion.
This isn’t diligence; it’s a slow, bureaucratic strangulation. We’ve become so obsessed with mitigating hypothetical risks-the rogue employee, the forgotten receipt, the unauthorized coffee maker-that we’ve systematically eroded trust. The mouse incident still stings: 17 clicks and three separate approvals, including one from a director who thought I was asking for a new car, just to get a basic peripheral. It arrived 27 days later. My old mouse, its scroll wheel barely clinging to life, felt like a silent judgment. We’ve confused complicated processes with rigorous work. One is a barrier, the other, a foundation. The underlying sentiment is clear: we don’t trust you to make good decisions with even the most trivial sums, so we will enshroud every tiny action in layers of red tape.
