Simple questions have become terrifying. Is this important? What should we fix first? Who gives a shit about this?
Instead of answering, we build elaborate systems to answer for us. Frameworks. Methodologies. Scoring systems. Decision trees that branch into more decision trees.
We’ve outsourced thinking to processes that feel scientific but are just fear dressed up as logic. The more factors we add, the less anyone has to risk anything. You’re not deciding what matters. The framework is.
Deciding means you might be wrong. Means someone might blame you. Means you give a fuck. Means you’re accountable. So we keep building more complicated ways to avoid responsibility. More inputs. More variables. More sophisticated ways to arrive where we started, but with our hands clean.
These systems don’t start as strategy. They’re monuments to individual failures. Someone fucks up, everyone gets a framework. Someone gets burned, everyone gets a process. We call it “scaling best practices” but we’re just institutionalizing one person’s mistake.
But everyone knows the answer before the process starts. The gut feeling. The obvious choice. So we make these systems just flexible enough to manipulate. Tick the right boxes, get the output you want. Make it mandatory when it’s your agenda, guidance when it’s theirs.
We spend days gaming our own barriers. Making spreadsheets agree with common sense. Performing calculation theater to justify the obvious.
We traded judgment for formulas. Thinking for process. We all know it’s idiotic but follow it anyway.
[Photo by Ana-Maria Stancu on Unsplash]