The most expensive solutions in companies often start with the words: “Just for now.” We won’t hire a new person yet; let the existing team hold out a little longer. We won’t fix the process; we’ll just explain to people how to work around it. We won’t address the root cause of the problem—what matters is that we get the job done today.
Such a stopgap creeps into the company unnoticed, as a reasonable response to a difficult day. No one considers it a good solution, but it seems acceptable to everyone until the conditions for something better arise. The problem is that those conditions rarely arise on their own. What is implemented for a few days ends up staying in place for months, and what is intended as an exception gradually becomes the standard way of working.
People get used to doing tasks that aren’t their responsibility. Mistakes start to be corrected manually, and additional spreadsheets are used to make up for what the system can’t do. The most responsible employees take on even more because management knows they will find a way to get the job done, as they always have. The company keeps functioning, results keep coming, and deadlines are met—somehow. That is precisely why the problem remains unresolved.
As long as someone stays late, checks others’ work, and plugs the gaps with their own effort, the system seems to work. But the people are exhausted. Their conscientiousness masks the organization’s weaknesses, and their adaptability lets management keep putting off decisions that should have been made long ago.
Then one day the person holding the whole improvisation together leaves. Only then does it become clear that the company never had a functioning process; it had an individual who, with their knowledge, time, and sense of responsibility, compensated for the gaps.
Temporary fixes aren’t always wrong; sometimes they’re the only way to keep the business afloat when there’s neither time nor sufficient resources. But every such fix must be reevaluated in time. Otherwise, extraordinary effort becomes the norm, and people’s ability to cope becomes an excuse for never fixing the system.
The greatest danger isn’t that a company sometimes has to improvise. It arises when improvisation drags on so long that everyone forgets it was meant to be temporary.
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