The Hidden Cost of a Broken Process - The Virus Inside Your Business.

Defining 'Broken' 

A process isn't broken just because it's slow, inefficient, or frustrating. It's broken when it no longer serves its intended purpose, when the work it was designed to enable is instead hindered by it. 

A broken process isn’t always obvious. It doesn’t always fail spectacularly. It might still function, just not in the way it should. Instead of driving efficiency, it creates work. Instead of reducing risk, it introduces friction. Instead of enabling progress, it becomes the obstacle. 

A process is broken when: 

• It requires workarounds to be effective. The formal process exists, but the real work happens outside of it. 

• It creates more problems than it solves. The time spent managing it outweighs the benefit it was meant to provide. 

• It forces people to compensate for its failures. Employees, customers, or suppliers have to absorb its inefficiencies—through rework, delays, or additional manual effort. 

• It exists for its own sake. No one can articulate why it’s done this way—only that "it’s how we’ve always done it." 

Possibly the worst thing about a broken process, however, is that they often don’t appear broken at all. They function well enough to avoid urgent scrutiny, embedding themselves deeper into the business. And the longer they remain unnoticed, the more they shape the way the organisation works—not by design, but by default. 

The Unseen Threat

A broken process is not just an operational inconvenience; it’s a virus in the bloodstream of your business. Most pay little attention to it––they ignore it, accept it, make excuses for it or add it to the backlog for the future––but as it spreads, it drains energy, consumes resources, and eventually takes control, moving far-beyond the system where it started, infecting teams, timelines, customers, and profit margins. 

The obvious costs of a broken process are just the tip of the iceberg. The real damage is in the second-and third-order effects—the hidden costs that multiply silently, like a virus infecting every system it touches. 

It starts small— a redundant checkpoint, a duplicated task, or additional handoff. It lingers, unnoticed. Then it multiplies. The backlog grows, rework increases, more people are pulled in to compensate. The business adapts to the inefficiency instead of eliminating it. And like any infection, the longer it goes untreated, the harder it is to contain. 

Most leaders think they see the cost of inefficiency; rework, backlogs, delays, overtime, customer complaints and so on. But these are just the symptoms. The real cost is much harder to see and therefore harder to quantify.  

It’s the quiet churn of frustrated customers who never complain, the gradual bottom line cost increases without driving any perceived value, and the revolving door of talent and need to rent expensive interim expertise instead of building it. 

Maybe the biggest threat to your business isn’t competition, regulation, or even inflation—it’s inefficient, broken processes. Because you think the cost is X, but it’s actually 10X. 

Practical Steps

Fixing broken processes doesn’t start with technology. It starts with culture. 

Because processes don’t fix themselves. People do. 

You can map workflows, add automation, and track a thousand metrics, but if your people don’t see inefficiencies, don’t flag them, aren’t connected to the reason the process exists or the value it creates for customers, and don’t care enough to fix them, nothing changes. 

A broken process doesn’t announce itself. It becomes normal. People work around it. They stop questioning it. And every day that passes, inefficiency embeds itself deeper into the way things are done. 

Technology won’t save you if your people are disengaged. Culture determines whether inefficiencies are ignored, accepted, or eliminated. 

Tech is already playing a big role and that will only increase in 2025 and beyond, but our suggestion to any organisation is to focus first on removing unnecessary activity, THEN automating, OR choosing the leanest way to deliver manual processes without compromising quality  

(obliterate, automate, or go with the leanest option). 

Make it everyone's responsibility 

Most inefficiencies don’t go unnoticed. They go unspoken. 

People see them, but they don’t flag them. They work around them. They assume inefficiencies are someone else’s job to fix. 

That’s not a process failure. That’s a cultural failure – and the advice we offer is simple: 

• Break the silence. If inefficiency isn’t called out, it spreads. Build a culture where people speak up. 

• Remove the fear. Those who challenge broken processes are not trouble makers—they represent progress – and these are the behaviours you want to instil. 

• Connect it to what matters. If people see how a process impacts the customer, they care more about getting it right. 
• Reward problem-solving, not just execution. Efficiency isn’t just about getting work done. It’s about improving how work gets done. 

A culture that questions, challenges, and improves isn’t just more efficient—it’s unstoppable. 

Connect People to the Purpose

When disconnected from purpose, a process is just a system of steps. A series of steps that disconnect people from the value of their work. So what can we do? 

• Tie every process to a real outcome. Who benefits? Who suffers when it breaks? 

• Make the customer visible. If people don’t see who they’re serving, they stop caring.
• Turn process improvement into customer advocacy. If fixing a process makes things better for a customer, it’s worth doing. 

A process without purpose is just a set of instructions. And instructions, over time, have a way of becoming more important than the outcome they were meant to serve. 

And in terms of what good looks like: Imagine a Financial Crime team who see themselves as secret superheroes—preventing fraud and protecting customers and the wider community from harm. To them, every case is more than just a task—it’s a mission. And when people see their work this way, they don’t just follow processes; they challenge, refine, and improve them. 

When you build a culture where people care, inefficiency has nowhere to hide. 

Make Process Improvement a Habit, Not an Initiative

Most businesses approach process improvement like a one-time project—a thing to fix and forget. That’s why inefficiencies keep coming back. But true continuous improvement is exactly that; continuous. 

There are two things I’ll call out: 

• Think about ownership. If no one is responsible for it, no one will improve it. 
• Fix the route causes, not the symptoms. Backlogs, delays, and errors aren’t the problems. They’re the result of the problem. Keep asking why. 

The process that works today might not work tomorrow – they harden over time. If they aren’t continuously improved, they don’t just slow down—they start working against you. 

Think of it this way: Process improvement is an activity, it's what you do—continuous improvement, however, goes further – it's a behaviour and culture – not just what you do, but who you are. 

Final Thoughts on Broken Processes

My prediction for 2025 and the next few years in general is not necessarily in innovation but in quietly revolutionising the mundane. The biggest opportunities lie in transforming resource-draining, forgotten broken processes and workflows, where spreadsheets and human error slow growth and eat into margins. I expect the companies that thrive will be those solving the unsexy. 

Watch the Series: Broken Processes – and How to Fix Them

If you'd prefer to sit back, watch and listen, we’ve turned it into a 7-part YouTube series of short, punchy videos.

Enjoy!