No organisation aims to be difficult to navigate, but they do accumulate layers over time.
A new approval may be required after an audit, or a new form introduced to improve compliance. Perhaps a new committee is created to provide additional oversight.
Each change is sensible on its own.
But years later, simple decisions can require ten signatures, and no one knows why.
Here, I use the term organisational sediment to describe this process.
What Is Organisational Sediment?
Organisational sediment refers to the accumulated layers of policies, procedures, approvals, reporting requirements, technologies and informal workarounds that remain after the circumstances that created them have passed.
Sediment is neither good nor bad. Like geological layers, it marks the history and development of an organisation. Indeed, some layers may represent hard-won gains in safety and governance.
The problem is that organisations often continue adding layers without eroding or compacting what came before. New processes are laid on top of old ones, hardening yesterday’s solutions into constraints.
Over time, the accumulation of sediment slows organisational functioning and creates inefficiencies that are difficult to account for.
Why Does Sediment Occur?
Let’s go over some key mechanisms behind this accumulation.
1. Adding is easier than subtracting.
Adding a policy or reporting system can be pointed to as a concrete action in response to a changing context.
But removing an item or process can raise concerns that oversight is being weakened. It is also hard to point to the absence of something as a response, even if it improves efficiency.
2. No one is responsible for cumulative burden.
No one may be directly responsible for overseeing the cumulative effects, measuring them or assessing their cost to the organisation.
Staff may report on the burden of accumulated processes, but their revision may require sustained, cross-department coordination that goes beyond the scope of any one leader.
3. Organisational memory fades.
Organisational memory of formative events fades as people leave. With their departure, the rationale behind a decision may also be forgotten, while the resulting process lingers on.
When it becomes baked into the way people do business, it becomes harder to imagine alternatives.
Why Sediment Matters
Sediment can slow decisions because each process takes time to complete.
Although each individual process may take only a little time, sedimented processes may cumulatively take up a lot of time that would be better spent on core job performance.
Counterintuitively, accountability can be obscured when processes require too many approvals.
Additional approvals are often introduced to increase accountability. But when everyone is overtasked, no one person may be able to devote adequate time to oversight.
Sediment can also lead organisations to focus more attention on procedures than on outcomes.
For example, people may be asked to repeatedly file forms until the information is entered correctly. Accuracy and precision are, of course, important, but should also be balanced against the costs of delay and employee time.
Ironically, attempts to improve organisational performance often produce another layer of sediment.
The Value of Subtraction
Instead of asking “What process should we now introduce?” leaders might ask “If we were designing this organisation today, would we build this process?”
This allows leaders to consider subtracting processes as well as adding them.
Healthy organisations know that strategic growth sometimes requires excavation.