Complexity is invisible at low volume
When a business handles a handful of jobs, a convoluted process just feels like attention to detail. The owner absorbs the extra steps personally and nobody experiences them as a cost.
At higher volume the same process becomes the bottleneck, and it is often blamed on staffing rather than design.
The exception problem
Most complexity arrives as an exception. A special discount for one customer, a different approval path for large jobs, a manual step added after one bad experience.
Each was reasonable in isolation. Collectively they produce a process that only long-tenured staff can execute correctly.
How to simplify without losing control
- Ask what would break if a step were removed — then test it on a small sample.
- Convert exceptions into rules, or retire them.
- Prefer defaults over decisions for routine work.
- Measure how long work waits between steps, not just how long steps take.