You shouldn’t treat your teams like government entities.
When a team hides behind complex processes, it’s often a sign their goals aren’t aligned with the company’s objectives. The problem worsens when process-driven individuals cluster together—they become the bottleneck.
Introducing someone with strong agency into this environment leads to two possible outcomes: either they’re charismatic enough to build alliances and challenge the status quo, or they’ll create shadow workflows, trying to get things done on their own.
Neither approach is scalable. The focus shifts from accomplishing the work to simply navigating the system to make the work possible.
In the long run, this burns out everyone involved.
The goal is simple: processes should enable work, not get in the way. Align teams with company goals, give them the autonomy to act, and keep processes lean. High-agency people will drive change, not fight the system. This is how you kill bottlenecks and build a culture that gets things done.
