TBM 303: Official, Real, and the Ideal

In every company, you have:

• A: The formal process and official way things are supposed to work

• B: The reality of how things work

This is by no means a novel idea (see Senge, Argyris, and Mintzberg) Let's add two more items:

• C: The effort required to translate B into A

• D: An idealized version of how the company works—not A, not B, but a glossy, problem-free hybrid

An example of C would be manager work to translate the messy team reality into an oversimplified executive dashboard that checks all of the A boxes, but the dashboard doesn't help anyone. It might scratch an exec's desire for a "big picture view," but it is mostly smoke and mirrors. Another great example is compliance. People on the front lines do their best to protect customers and partners; meanwhile, the formal compliance apparatus shoves all kinds of forms at them to do compliance theater. We put so much effort into box-checking.

An example of D would be an executive claiming that teams "just work together to figure out these problems," when 1) there are all sorts of onerous processes surrounding that, and 2) some teams do, in fact, work things out, but they never receive any formal thanks and acknowledgement. Why? Again, it's optics. People don't want to admit the harm of A, the workarounds of B, or the effort involved in C, so they claim things are better than they are.

Let's add another item:

• E: A well-meaning future direction

An example of E would be an executive acknowledging that A and C are unwieldy and that pretending everything is fine (item D) is rubbing salt in the wounds. Maybe they want more teams to be able to customize how they work locally—the best of B. They want a new and lighter A. In the future, they don't want teams saddled with so many dependencies and want teams to be less burdened by box-checking.

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Putting this picture together, we see that organizations are always a jumble of:

• A: The official way things work—the boxes to check, the "formal process."

• B: How things work—how work is happening

• C: The effort required to translate reality into the "official" way

• D: An optics-oriented idealization of the present 

• E: A well-meaning direction to improve the situation

Here's why I think this is important.

First, I think companies vastly underestimate the burden of translation ( C ). It can be a full-time job, and very few people talk about it because the whole point is pretending one way exists when multiple ways exist. It is a time suck and a will/motivation sinkhole.

Second, many companies—especially rapidly growing tech companies—play many D games. They don't want to admit the burden of A, B, or C. They'd rather pretend everything is nice and easy and that "good managers just work it out." This is especially true among relatively unburdened teams that don't want to be slowed down by process or reality. This also takes a tool on the team (who don’t feel acknowledged).

Third, D and E can look remarkably similar. You have to be careful. When you're trying to improve things for the better, you don't necessarily want to institutionalize all of your bad habits. For example, if you envision a future state with fewer dependencies, you may not want to create too many formal processes around managing those dependencies (formalized A). You like that pockets of teams are figuring this out (B) and want to spread those insights to other teams. But if you go out and pretend they don't exist (D)—that's taking advantage of your team and denying their reality.

Earlier in my career, I advocated for steadfastly "visualizing things as they are." It didn't immediately click that pushback was often grounded in a mix of A-D. People didn't want to be reminded how hard, soul-crushing, and demanding things are for various reasons, including optics, AND, in many cases, because of E—they accepted the problem but didn't want to get too hung up on it.

What are your thoughts on these categories? How does your company juggle "reality," aspiration, and box-checking?