Build Repeatability Without Building Bureaucracy

When I commanded 25 Canadian Forces Supply Depot, I found myself dealing with an incredibly frustrating situation. Not because our people lacked the ability to do their jobs, but because the system was preventing us from putting experienced supervisors into permanent positions.

We had capable civilian employees who knew the organization, understood the work, and had the experience needed to lead their teams. Yet we couldn’t permanently appoint them to certain supervisory positions because they hadn’t achieved the required results on their Official Languages assessments.

Those positions required a CBC language profile, including a C-level result in oral proficiency.

Now, let me be clear about something. The issue wasn’t that these employees couldn’t speak English. Many spoke excellent English. They communicated effectively in the workplace, discussed complex operational issues, and worked comfortably with colleagues in both official languages.

But despite investing countless hours in language training and repeatedly attempting the examinations, some continued to struggle to achieve the required oral assessment result.

And that distinction matters.

Not achieving a particular test result doesn’t automatically mean someone lacks the practical ability to do the job.

This was happening in an organization where approximately 94% of our personnel were francophone.

I understood why Official Languages requirements existed. They protect important rights and obligations within the federal public service, and those obligations matter. But I was also responsible for an organization that needed experienced, consistent supervision.

To keep those positions functioning, we relied on temporary acting appointments. Under the staffing arrangements available to us, we could appoint someone for three months less a day before having to rotate another employee into the position or seek higher approval.

Think about what that meant for the people working in those sections.

Every few months, they were adjusting to another supervisor, another leadership style, and another set of expectations. Just as relationships were developing and employees were getting comfortable with their leadership, the person in charge would change.

It was terrible for continuity, but the consequences went much further.

Morale suffered. People became frustrated. Trust in leadership deteriorated, as did trust in the broader system. The constant uncertainty created stress for employees who simply wanted to come to work, do their jobs, and have some stability.

And I was frustrated too.

We explored every legitimate avenue we could find to resolve the situation. We even encouraged affected employees to raise their concerns through their union, recognizing that some changes needed to be pursued beyond my authority as the commanding officer.

That suggestion went over about as well as you might imagine.

Ultimately, despite our efforts, we had to operate within the existing policy. We could see the consequences and understood the operational challenges, but we couldn’t change the requirement ourselves.

The lesson wasn’t that Official Languages requirements were unnecessary or that leaders should ignore policies they disagree with.

It was that a system can be operating exactly as required while still creating consequences that undermine organizational effectiveness and the people who depend upon it.

And while this experience involved requirements established beyond my authority, it reinforced something I’ve come to believe about the systems we create within our own organizations.

We need to spend less time asking whether people are following our processes and more time understanding whether those processes are actually helping them succeed.

The challenge of growing organizations

When an organization is small, informal coordination can work remarkably well. People know who’s responsible for what, decisions happen through conversations, and much of the organizational knowledge exists in the heads of a relatively small number of people.

As the organization grows, however, that approach becomes less reliable.

Responsibilities become more specialized. New employees arrive. Work crosses departmental boundaries, and the informal relationships that once kept everything moving can no longer support the complexity of the operation.

Without reliable processes, ownership becomes unclear. Work gets performed differently depending on who’s doing it. Mistakes repeat, important information gets lost, and critical activities become dependent on particular individuals being available.

There is a real cost to having too little structure.

But there’s also a cost to having too much.

Excessive processes create bottlenecks, duplicated effort, unnecessary approvals, and slow decisions. Capable employees stop exercising judgment because the system doesn’t give them room to act. Some develop informal workarounds, not because they’re trying to undermine the organization, but because the official process makes ordinary work unnecessarily difficult.

Neither extreme is sustainable.

The leadership challenge is to create enough structure to deliver consistent results while preserving the judgment and flexibility needed to respond to real operating conditions.

Standardize what should be consistent. Empower people where judgment matters.

Every process should be able to explain itself

One of the challenges with organizational processes is that they tend to outlive the circumstances that created them.

A requirement gets introduced after a mistake. An approval gets added following an audit. A new reporting obligation appears because something went wrong several years earlier.

Over time, the people responsible for following those processes may have no idea why they were introduced. Even the leaders overseeing them might not know.

Yet the requirements remain because nobody wants to be the person who removes something that might have been important.

That hesitation is understandable. Some controls exist to prevent events that happen rarely but could have serious consequences. Their value cannot be measured simply by how frequently they’re used.

But every process should still be able to answer two fundamental questions.

What specific failure is this process intended to prevent?

How does this process actually prevent that failure?

If we cannot explain the purpose of a process, that doesn’t automatically mean we should remove it. It means we need to understand it.

Perhaps the control is essential and needs to be communicated more clearly. Perhaps the risk has changed. Or perhaps the process has remained in place simply because nobody has questioned it.

A process should contribute to the outcome, improve consistency, or protect something the organization has a legitimate obligation to protect.

If it does none of those things, leaders should be willing to challenge its continued existence.

The Minimum Effective System

So how do we create reliable, repeatable processes without building unnecessary bureaucracy?

I believe leaders should aim for what I call the Minimum Effective System.

The simplest reliable process that consistently delivers the required outcome while managing legitimate operational, financial, safety, and compliance risks.

The word minimum doesn’t mean removing essential oversight or cutting corners. It means eliminating unnecessary effort. And effective means the process actually delivers what the organization needs, rather than simply documenting that people followed the required steps.

There are six considerations I would use when designing or reviewing a process.

1. Start with the outcome.

Before creating a form, introducing software, or establishing an approval chain, define what the process must accomplish. What does success look like? What standards must be met? What obligations cannot be compromised?

If we begin with the administrative steps rather than the intended result, we risk building a system that’s very good at tracking activity without necessarily delivering the outcome.

2. Identify what can go wrong.

Consider the failures that could prevent success. Some will be routine problems such as missing information, delayed approvals, or unclear responsibilities. Others may be rare but carry significant consequences.

The controls we introduce should reflect those risks rather than treating every possible failure as equally serious.

3. Establish the essential controls.

Determine which safeguards are actually required. That might involve spending thresholds, checklists, quality inspections, documented approvals, or mandatory regulatory requirements.

Each control should serve an identifiable purpose. Adding another review that simply repeats what someone else has already checked doesn’t automatically make the process safer or more reliable.

4. Clarify ownership and authority.

People need to know who’s responsible for the work, who owns the outcome, and who has the authority to make decisions.

Responsibility without sufficient authority creates frustration and dependency. If someone is accountable for delivering a result but needs permission for every routine decision, the system may be preventing them from doing the very job they’ve been assigned.

This is particularly important when work moves between departments. A handoff should identify who owns the next action, what information must be transferred, and what triggers the next step.

Without that clarity, organizations compensate with follow-up emails, unnecessary meetings, and senior leaders personally intervening to keep work moving.

5. Remove unnecessary friction.

Examine the process from the perspective of the people using it. Where is information entered more than once? Which approvals duplicate one another? Where does work sit waiting for a decision? What workarounds have become normal?

Sometimes the solution is to eliminate a step. Other times it’s to clarify an instruction, consolidate a review, or adjust who has authority to act.

The objective is to make the work easier without compromising legitimate safeguards.

6. Test the process in real operating conditions.

A process isn’t proven because it looks good on paper. It’s proven when people can use it reliably, when it delivers the intended outcome, and when it continues functioning without constant intervention from senior leadership.

That requires feedback, measurement, and a willingness to adjust. Organizations change. The processes supporting them need to evolve as well.

Consider something as ordinary as purchasing supplies.

An employee needs a routine item, but the request moves through multiple approvals, requires information to be entered into more than one system, and sits waiting for someone to respond.

Rather than simply removing approvals, a leader applying the Minimum Effective System would begin by identifying what actually needs to be protected. Perhaps it’s budget authority, accurate financial records, or ensuring purchases meet contractual requirements.

From there, the organization could establish appropriate spending thresholds, clarify who can approve routine purchases, and eliminate duplicated administrative work while preserving the necessary financial controls.

The result isn’t an organization with fewer rules for the sake of having fewer rules. It’s one where the controls serve a clear purpose and employees can complete legitimate work without unnecessary obstacles.

Compliance isn’t the same as effectiveness

One of the easiest mistakes leaders make is assuming that because a process is being followed, it must be working.

Those are two very different things.

In regulated environments, compliance is essential. Organizations have legal, financial, contractual, and safety obligations that cannot simply be set aside because following them takes time.

But compliance alone doesn’t tell us whether a process is achieving its broader purpose effectively.

A process can be followed perfectly while creating delays, duplicating work, or forcing employees to develop informal workarounds just to keep things moving.

Leaders need to examine both sides of the equation. Are the necessary controls being followed? And is the process producing the operational outcomes the organization actually needs?

That means looking beyond compliance reports to understand how long work takes, where decisions become delayed, how often information is duplicated, and where people are repeatedly intervening to keep things moving.

It also means listening to the employees who work within those systems every day. A workflow might look perfectly reasonable on a diagram. The people living with it may tell a very different story.

And sometimes, as I experienced at 25 CFSD, the process creating the problem isn’t yours to redesign.

It might be established through legislation, regulation, collective agreements, corporate governance, or policy imposed by a higher authority.

Recognizing the problem doesn’t automatically give you the authority to remove the requirement. But it doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility to understand the consequences, explore legitimate alternatives, and advocate for improvement.

Sometimes you don’t get to fix the system. You’re still responsible for leading the people affected by it.

Start with one process

If you’re leading a growing organization, I wouldn’t recommend launching a massive process redesign simply because you recognize some bureaucracy has crept into your operations.

Start with one recurring activity that’s creating unnecessary frustration. Perhaps it’s purchasing, onboarding, reporting, customer handoffs, or an approval process that regularly slows decisions.

Talk to the people who actually perform the work. Understand what the process is supposed to achieve, which risks it needs to manage, and where the difficulties occur.

Then ask yourself a few questions.

Are we measuring whether the process works, or simply whether people follow it? Do the people responsible for delivering outcomes have the authority they need? Which steps genuinely protect the organization, and which have remained because nobody has questioned them?

And perhaps most importantly, what is the impact of this process on the people who have to work within it?

Because bureaucracy doesn’t just consume time. It can undermine trust, damage morale, discourage initiative, and leave capable employees feeling that the organization values its administrative requirements more than their contributions.

I’ve seen what that looks like, and it’s not something leaders should dismiss as simply the cost of doing business.

Growing organizations need structure. They need consistency, accountability, and controls that protect what matters. But those systems should enable people to do their jobs, not become obstacles they have to overcome every day.

Every process should earn its place in your organization.

And when a process isn’t yours to change, you still have a responsibility to understand its consequences and advocate for improvement.

Take a look at one process in your organization this week. Not from the perspective of the person who approved it, but from the perspective of the people who have to live with it.

What would you discover?

If you’re a founder, executive, or business owner trying to introduce more structure without creating unnecessary bureaucracy, these are exactly the kinds of leadership challenges worth working through. A Leadership Clarity Call can be an opportunity to examine where your systems are supporting growth and where they may be holding your organization back.

Your people shouldn’t have to fight your systems to do their jobs.