Process & success

Steve Jobs once said,

People get confused; companies get confused. When they start getting bigger, they want to replicate their initial success. And a lot of them think, ‘Well, somehow, there’s some magic in the process of how that success was created.’ So they start to institutionalize process across the company. And before very long, people start to get confused that the process is the content.

Managers think success is largely the result of how it is built, rather than what is being built or who built it. They believe by using the same scaffolding, paint brush and work schedule, anyone, particularly themselves, can also create the equivalent of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling.

The bane of process worshiping managers is that they will try to bend everyone into the same shape and do exactly what they are asked to do. Anyone who steps out of the line is deemed to be hard to manage, a loose canon.

In other words, they believe success is achieved by machines, rather than contributions from motivated, talented people.