The Workaround Economy: What Employees Invent When the Official Way Stops Working
There is probably a spreadsheet somewhere in your organization that technically should not exist.
Someone created it three years ago because the official system did not give them what they needed. Now six people use it. One person knows all the formulas. Another person keeps a backup copy “just in case.” New employees learn about it sometime during their first month, usually when a coworker says, “Don't use that report. I'll show you how we actually do it.”
There may also be a group text that became the fastest way to solve scheduling problems. A handwritten list taped inside a cabinet because the electronic inventory system is too slow. A veteran employee everyone calls because she knows how to get something approved. A folder on somebody's desktop containing templates that were never formally adopted but everyone uses anyway.
None of these things appear on the organizational chart.
But they may be running the organization.
I call this the Workaround Economy: the collection of unofficial processes employees create when the official process does not match the reality of getting the work done.
And every organization has one.
Workarounds Usually Begin With Competence
We tend to think of people ignoring a process as a compliance problem. Sometimes it is. But many workarounds begin for the opposite reason.
Someone is trying to do their job well.
A caseworker needs information before meeting with a family, but the database takes too many steps to retrieve it. So she creates a personal tracking sheet.
A teacher needs a faster way to communicate a student concern to colleagues, so the team develops an informal message thread.
A clinician discovers that a required form asks for information in an order that does not match the actual conversation with clients, so they take notes separately and enter everything later.
An administrative employee learns that submitting a request through the official channel takes ten days, but calling one particular person gets an answer by tomorrow.
People encounter friction, and capable people solve problems.
That is what we hire them to do.
The interesting question is what happens next.
Temporary Solutions Have a Way of Becoming Permanent
The first time someone creates a workaround, it may save ten minutes.
The hundredth time, it has become a process.
But because nobody officially designed that process, it may have no documentation, quality control, backup plan, or clear ownership.
This is how organizations become dependent on things leadership may not even know exist.
Then Maria retires.
Suddenly nobody knows how the monthly report gets reconciled.
Marcus transfers departments, and everyone discovers that the “simple” referral process actually depended on Marcus personally knowing whom to call.
The administrative assistant takes vacation, and a routine task stops moving because the real instructions were stored in her head rather than in the procedure manual.
Organizations often describe these moments as knowledge-transfer problems.
Sometimes they are actually workaround-transfer problems.
The official process was documented.
The real process wasn't.
Listen for “What We Actually Do Is…”
There is a phrase leaders should become fascinated by:
“What we actually do is…”
Whenever you hear it, pay attention.
“The policy says this, but what we actually do is…”
“The system wants you to enter it here, but what we actually do is…”
“Technically you're supposed to contact them, but what we actually do is…”
That sentence is a doorway into how work truly happens.
It does not automatically mean the unofficial approach is better. It may expose a safety concern, unnecessary risk, inconsistent practice, or a process that needs to be corrected immediately.
But it may also reveal that employees have solved a problem the formal system has failed to solve.
Either way, leadership should want to know.
The Two Faces of a Workaround
Workarounds are interesting because they can be both evidence of organizational strength and evidence of organizational weakness.
They demonstrate ingenuity.
People are adapting, collaborating, and finding ways to serve clients, students, patients, families, customers, or colleagues despite obstacles.
That is valuable.
But every workaround also asks a question:
Why was this necessary?
If employees repeatedly bypass the same process, perhaps the problem is not the employees.
Perhaps the process deserves another look.
This distinction matters because organizations sometimes respond to workarounds by tightening compliance without investigating the friction that created them.
Employees are reminded to “follow the procedure.”
Another approval is added.
Another form appears.
Another training is scheduled.
The organization becomes more technically compliant and practically cumbersome.
Then people invent a new workaround.
The Shadow Organization
If enough workarounds accumulate, something fascinating happens.
Two organizations begin operating simultaneously.
There is the official organization: policies, workflows, job descriptions, reporting structures, software, forms, and procedures.
Then there is the shadow organization: relationships, shortcuts, favors, personal spreadsheets, side conversations, institutional memory, and the handful of people who know how to make things happen.
The official organization tells you how work is supposed to move.
The shadow organization tells you how it actually moves.
The distance between those two is worth measuring.
A small distance is normal. No procedure can anticipate every real-world situation.
A large distance should concern leaders.
Because when an organization depends too heavily on its shadow system, consistency becomes fragile. New employees struggle because they only received the official instructions. Long-term employees become disproportionately valuable because they understand the unwritten ones. Errors become harder to trace because the real workflow is invisible.
And improvement becomes difficult because leadership is redesigning the process they think exists.
Your Most Valuable Employee May Also Be Your Biggest Warning Sign
Almost every workplace has a person everyone describes as indispensable.
“She knows everything.”
“Ask him. He'll know.”
“We don't know what we'd do without her.”
That sounds like praise, and it is.
But it can also be a warning.
When one person's knowledge becomes the bridge between broken systems, the organization has created a single point of failure.
That employee may be carrying passwords, relationships, exceptions, historical context, unofficial procedures, and solutions nobody else possesses.
The goal is not to make that person less valuable.
It is to make their knowledge more valuable by allowing the organization to learn from it.
Instead of simply praising the person who always saves the day, ask:
Why does this situation require saving so often?
That question can reveal enormous opportunities for improvement.
Go on a Workaround Hunt
One of the most useful conversations a leadership team could have requires no consultant, new software, or elaborate assessment.
Ask employees:
“What do you have to do to get your job done that isn't written down anywhere?”
Then listen without immediately correcting them.
Ask what spreadsheet they created.
What extra step they take.
Whom they call when the normal route fails.
What information they keep somewhere else.
What process they teach new employees differently from the written instructions.
Where they duplicate work.
Where they have learned not to bother with the official method.
You may discover risks that need immediate attention.
But you may also discover some of the best process improvements your organization never formally designed.
They were already invented by your employees.
Don't Eliminate Every Workaround
The goal should not be a workplace where nobody improvises.
That would be unrealistic and, frankly, undesirable.
Human work requires judgment. Helping professions especially require professionals to respond to circumstances no procedure could completely predict.
The goal is to distinguish between healthy adaptation and structural compensation.
Healthy adaptation says, “This situation is unusual, so I need to adjust.”
Structural compensation says, “The normal system doesn't work, so everyone has learned another way.”
Those are very different organizational realities.
One demonstrates professional judgment.
The other may be telling leadership that the system needs attention.
The People Closest to the Friction Often See the Solution First
Organizations frequently hire outside expertise to improve processes while overlooking the people who navigate those processes every day.
Both perspectives have value.
Outside eyes can see patterns insiders have normalized.
But employees possess something equally important: proximity.
They know where the extra clicks are.
They know which form asks the same question twice.
They know which approval adds three days but little value.
They know which meeting exists because another process is unclear.
They know where clients become confused.
They know which policy sounds reasonable until it meets Tuesday afternoon.
Their workarounds are often maps of organizational friction.
Read the map.
The Bigger Lesson
There is something deeply human about the Workaround Economy.
When systems fail to match reality, people rarely stop immediately.
They adapt.
They create.
They borrow.
They call somebody.
They build spreadsheets.
They make lists.
They develop shortcuts.
They find a way.
Organizations benefit enormously from that ingenuity.
But they should not exploit it.
Employees should not have to spend years compensating for preventable friction simply because they became good at doing so.
Sometimes the person who appears extraordinarily efficient has simply learned how to survive an inefficient system.
Sometimes the employee who “knows everybody” has become the organization's unofficial routing system.
Sometimes the spreadsheet nobody authorized contains a better understanding of the work than the expensive platform everyone was told to use.
And sometimes the sentence “That's just how we do it around here” deserves one more question:
“Why?”
The next major improvement in your organization may not need to be invented.
Your people may have already built it.
Leadership just needs to notice.
Master Trainer, International Speaker and author of the book “Invincible Social Worker”, Anthony President has empowered and inspired more than 100,000 professionals to perform, produce and partner better at their places of work. Thousands of companies and organizations have been transformed as a result of Anthony’s work.
As Founder and CEO of Presidential Consultants, LLC, Anthony leads a team of more than two dozen experienced learning development and coaching professionals who together serve more than 16,000 helping professionals each year in the areas of leadership, inclusion, and workplace wellness. As a thought leader in the field, Anthony continues to research, innovate, and drive positive change in the realm of professional development and organizational transformation.
Comments