Shadow workflows and captive mitigators

When working in projects with an expert audience, I often come across quotes like this:

“We don’t need some overblown user experience.
Our users have to use this tool.”

It’s fascinating to me because it seems to be based on two contrasting fallacies. The well-known Dunning Kruger Effect and something I want to call “the reverse complexity bias”.

The Dunning Kruger Effect describes how people with limited competence in a certain area overestimate their own abilities and often underestimate the complexity of said area. This explains how people can be so vehemently against investing in a better user experience when they seem to have very superficial knowledge about its value and purpose.

This misconception is paired with another bias.

The reverse complexity bias

The original “complexity bias” describes that things that look complicated must also be complicated. There are fascinating experiments that prove how we can influence and direct user behaviour by making things look more or less complex.

The “reverse complexity bias”, on the other hand, describes our conclusion that experts do very complicated things that are incomprehensible to non-experts. It is therefore only logical that expert tools are complicated and incomprehensible.

This combination of misconceptions explains why we often end up with user interfaces that are cluttered with nested menus, confusing navigation, overflowing tables, inaccessible acronyms and scrambled information. But still, we wouldn’t think this could be a problem.

Because from a high-level business perspective — it works? Of course users complain from time to time. But this is what users do. So why should we worry? We pay them to do their job. It is not our job to make them happy.

It works because it is not not working.

Employees do their job and meet their deadlines. They start on time and work 8 hours a day. For the grumblers and dissatisfied we offer a fridge with organic soda, a really nice coffee machine and state of the art corporate benefits.

So from a management level everything looks fine. And as long as we don’t look deeper, we don’t have to question that.

If we actually looked and listened to people, we would discover a lot of inconsistencies and gaps. Such as inconsistent data, missing information, broken processes and communication, redundant and repetitive activities. But most importantly, we would discover a lot of unknown workarounds that users have developed to address all these shortcomings.

It doesn’t work because of our tools and processes. It works in spite of them. It works because the users make it work — they have to. And they do this sometimes with incredible creativity and resilience.

Captive mitigators

Solving or mitigating problems is a core human skill — if the incentive is sufficient. If it is not, we are also really good at ignoring and avoiding problems.

For captive users, so users that are forced to use certain tools, the incentive often is quite high, especially the negative ones. A lot could depend on them being able to deliver on external and also internal expectations. For example: Do they deliver results? Am I good at my job? Are they dependable? Will I keep my job?

So they have to find ways to achieve their set goals and fulfil all the expectations with tools they are given.

In most cases this is simply how work processes emerge and evolve. But in some cases it also introduces a few risks.

The shadow workflow

Users often demonstrate amazing creativity to patch up or clear a disrupted workflow. This often creates shadow workflows that are invisible or even unknown to the organisation which introduces multiple potential risks.

Persistence

Disrupted workflows also means disrupted information flows. To patch this up users often create additional, in many cases manual data sources and communications channels. Like writing notes on paper and making a phone call. Depending on their solution it can be very difficult to persist any of the data created.

Also this shadow workflow is often only known by the creators themselves. So we have to trust them to document everything correctly and securely. Also if they change their position or leave the company we have to rely on them onboarding their replacement properly. In most cases though a lot of irreplaceable knowledge and information is lost.

Security

Another problem with these shadow workflows is that they themselves can pose a security risk. Sensibel information could end up in insecure documents, storage spaces or communication channels. This can be further accelerated by an unclear and extremely restrictive software policy.

Remember: If the incentive is big enough, users will find a way to make things work. Even if this way is extremely risky or even forbidden. Especially when bringing up issues with a disrupted workflow could be seen as incompetence or laziness.

Jenga effect

Not knowing the workarounds of our users also introduces a huge risk when it comes to updating or changing the tools we provide. By accident we could change or remove a feature or piece of information that is a critical interface for their workflow patch.

At the very least, this will force them to readjust their workflow, but at worst it could also lead to the complete collapse of their workflow. Leaving us with anything from even more disgruntled users to critical dips in productivity. To the point where people simply resign because the effort and stress trumps the incentive.

Tooltime overload

Tooltime vs. Goaltime is a very interesting concept that Jared M. Spool writes about in his article Dividing User Time Between Goal And Tool.

In short, tooltime is the time a user spends on tasks that actually don’t add to the quality of their goal. Goaltime, on the other hand, directly contributes to the quality of their goal.

By shifting all the responsibilities to our captive mitigators we increase their tooltime and therefore create an environment that is far from productive.

In summary: Any disruption of flows creates friction and delays that make people less productive. By neglecting those disruptions we force our users into becoming captive mitigators which often leads to vulnerable shadow workflows. We clutter our users’ cognitive capacity, exploit their creativity and hinder their productivity.

So how can we fix this?

“Our people have to use this tool. So we really should try to understand what they need.”

Let’s fix this

A system that relies on captive mitigators is a vulnerable system. Every disruption of data-streams, information-flows, processes, tasks or communication is a function for the deficiency and susceptibility of a system.

In business terms: A system that relies on captive mitigators is at odds with our big four business goals: push growth, increase profit, reduce costs and mitigate risks.

Here are six principles to fix this:

Focus on the user.

Users are an invaluable reality check for our ideas and assumptions. With the help of our users we can map a process that is based on their work reality. If it is a disrupted system it will clearly show breaks, delays and conflicts.

Each disruption is an opportunity to find a better solution. A holistic approach like service design then helps us to design a process blueprint that is more closely aligned with business, process and user needs.

Embrace the disruption

Often the most fascinating part about a disruption is how captive mitigators patched it. By analysing their mitigation strategies we often gain invaluable insight into what actually is important and how the process ultimately should look like.

We should therefore not rush to close the gap ourselves, but first learn more about our users’ strategy or — even better — involve them in this process.

Look beyond the golden path.

Very often we design exclusively for the perfect scenario. But it is also important to look for scenarios beyond the golden path.

This makes our solutions more robust and reliable and allows users to customise the workflow to their preferences and capabilities to achieve their goals more effectively.

Pro Tipp: The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines is an amazing standardised framework that not only helps us to create high quality products with excellent usability. Its success criteria also help us to consider the realities beyond the golden path.

Let go and de-habituate

People get used to almost anything, even the worst tools (if there is no alternative).

Habituation is a great challenge whenever humans are involved . Our brain loves to ignore the things that bother us. Like for example a very bad smell that magically fades after a short while. Or like a cluttered toolbar without any useful tools that block ⅕ of our screen for some reason. Or an annoying error message that we can’t fix ourselves but that won’t go away.

Bad interfaces train their users to ignore sometimes huge parts of the interface itself. Even if the information actually would be helpful or important sometimes.

To get rid of those blindspots we have to free ourselves from the existing solution. We have to focus more on the user, their workflows, their goals and their needs. And we shouldn’t be afraid of missing something. Important features will reappear — with less noise and distraction.

Start small

The more complex a system is, the more difficult it is to change or replace it. It is impossible to consider and anticipate all the implications and correlations. There is always a great risk that we will overlook or underestimate things or that our changes will have unforeseen and unwanted consequences.

So the better approach is to take smaller steps. Fixing just one problem within the current process is already an amazing start. It helps us to demonstrate tangible outcome and impact quickly. Which in turn helps us to win over sceptics and critics.

Be fearless

Of course this approach is an ideal world scenario itself. It can seem impossible to work this way because of all the dependencies, obstacles and roadblocks. But it is important not to be discouraged.

“Every system is perfectly designed to achieve the results it gets” – Dr. Donald Berwick, Former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

This is a very important mantra for me because it reminds me that the reason organisations function in a certain way, in most cases, is because they are simply not designed to function in another way.

So if we want change the outcome, we have two options:

We either have to find a way to change the system or we must set up a new autonomous system with which we are able to achieve our desired result. For example, a team with autonomy, ownership and all the necessary skills and resources that demonstrates its value by solving one problem at a time. A lighthouse team that demonstrates a new way of working and a new path to production for others to follow.

But that is a topic that deserves its own article.

So we should feel empowered because this not only unburdens our users and drastically improves their satisfaction and effectiveness. This will also change the whole organisation because we will learn new skills and capabilities along the way that will make us more successful than ever before.

Please also check out my previous article “Give me empathy” where I wrote more about the one fact I know to be true.