People are repulsed by work environments plagued by stifling red tape. Having been forced to deal with it, I’ve observed how red tape creeps in. Even with the best intentions, people without domain knowledge create red tape.
Here are 2 cases of how this happens:
- Inability to form targeted solutions
- Inability to filter information causing decision paralysis
Inability to form targeted solutions
People without domain knowledge will find it difficult to understand problems and give effective solutions.
Analysis
No domain knowledge means problems are blackboxes. They are blackboxes because they are not understood well—and cannot be broken down into smaller chunks. Only inputs and outputs are seen. This leads to solutions focused on inputs and outputs—not systems.
Example
In 2021, a developing country’s software went down. This was caused by a misconfiguration of servers when the tech team tried to upgrade it.
This is in the technology domain, but the managers were military officers and lawyers—who have no experience with software at scale. They did not understand server configurations. They only saw input and output: Upgrade server (input), server downtime (output).
They implemented these solutions:
- Solution focused on input: Do not upgrade servers often because it will cause downtime
- Solution focused on output: When downtime happens, the tech team should immediately give an estimate time-to-fix
The decision makers wanted to avoid downtime—but their solutions are bandaid solutions. They tech team is prevented from preventing problems (limit on upgrading servers). And when problems happen, the tech team is prevented from solving it immediately (requirement to give time to fix). These are distractions from efficient problem solving.
…and to beat the dead horse, the meeting went on to talk about big data and data mining. Now, on top of managing scale, the tech team also has to do “big data”.
Conclusion
Poor-domain knowledge leads to non-targeted solutions. Non-targeted solutions become unnecessary but required procedures. This is red tape.
Inability to filter information causing decision paralysis
To compensate for information-insecurity, people with no domain knowledge ask a lot of questions—but not the right questions.
Analysis
When making a decision, people with no domain knowledge start with little information. At this point, they are afraid to decide—so they seek out more information. To play safe, they seek information in different directions—straying further away from relevance. Their lack of domain knowledge also makes it difficult to filter important from irrelevant. This manifests in more submission requirements, more due diligence, and more paperwork.
Example
Software is moving away from on-premise servers to the cloud. Consequently, pricing models change from single payment to pay-per-use. Pay-per-use pricing is one of few prevailing SaaS pricing models. Traditional organizations grapple with this transition.
A friend relayed their struggle in offering pay-per-use to a traditional organization.
They run a SaaS business model—they charge per transaction on the cloud. One of their clients was only familiar with on-premise single pay software.
Their client was under pressure to exercise proper due diligence. The client faces an annual audit—so they need to explain why this price is fair. In doing so, they tried to justify why total amount (unit price x total number of transactions) is a reasonable sum to pay per month.
To justify unit price, you need to look at variable cost per transaction. You shouldn’t get total amount and then calculate from there.
Due to the lack of domain knowledge, the clients requested a justification for the total amount to be paid. They asked: “Given 10,000 text messages, you will get this much dollars. Why is that fair?”
The software company had to show a spend plan at 10,000 text messages
The client then asked: “We’ll pay you more when the number of text messages increase by 10,000. Why is that fair?”
The software company had to show a new spend plan at 20,000 text messages
…and then the software company had to show a spend plan at every 10,000 text message increment. By now you’ve realized that the increase of transaction is infinite.
Because they lacked domain knowledge, the client’s line of questioning required the software company to submit more useless paperwork and suffer a longer decision time.
Conclusion
People with poor domain knowledge suffer from information-insecurity. To compensate, they require more information. But they do not have the knowledge to filter it properly. This translates to more requirements—some irrelevant—and longer processing times. This is red tape.
Not much of a conclusion, but short insights
- We should hire and promote people with domain knowledge
- In group decisions, person with least domain knowledge should yield
- If there are competing decisions to adjudicate, give it to the one with most domain knowledge
