The Disease Of Process People
Inspired by on Lenny's Podcast
Kid misbehaves? Make a chart. Mornings chaotic? Add a timer. Problem persists? Make a bigger chart. At some point, the charts are the problem.
Steve Jobs warned about 'the disease of process people.' When things get hard, we add more rules, more checkboxes, more structure. But process is a crutch. It replaces judgment with compliance.
Parents fall in constantly. Kid misbehaves? Consequence chart. Mornings chaotic? Elaborate routine with timers. Homework battles? Point system. Problem persists? BIGGER chart. More lamination.
'Scaling is hard. And fundamentally, there's two ways to scale. You can scale with process or you can scale with leaders.'
Some structure is good. But when you find yourself adding process on top of process, you're probably avoiding harder work: developing judgment, building skills, having conversations.
In a family, scaling with 'leaders' means developing capable people - kids who can make good decisions - rather than creating elaborate systems they have to follow.
Rules are training wheels. The goal is to take them off eventually.
(Though if one more person tells me about their laminated routine chart, I'm going to need a moment.)
PM Theme: Process vs. culture / scaling
Parenting Theme: Developing judgment over following rules
“Steve Jobs talked about this. This was the other disease he talked about and that's the disease of process people... scaling is hard. And fundamentally, there's two ways to scale. You can scale with process or you can scale with leaders.”Marty Cagan · 56:07
“The only way I know that leads to good outcomes is scaling with leaders, but the easier, more appealing one to so many companies is scaling with process.”Marty Cagan · 56:07
