United Airlines recently deplaned a senior citizen, Dr David Dao, in a rather violent way for no fault of his. The airlines had to accommodate some extra crew members on the flight, and there was no one ready to deplane voluntarily, even in exchange for monetary reward. At which point, they decided that they will have to choose to deplane some against their wishes. Whatever algorithm they used spun the bottle in a way that it chose Dr Dao. He had to see patients that day, and so, like a lot of people who respect their time are, he was rather adamant that he would not get off the plane. Force was used, mobile phones captured the inhuman farce, and all the outrage that followed was entirely justified.
United’s CEO Oscar Munoz has issued multiple apology statements since, each trying to correct the tone-deaf nature of the previous ones. After skirting around the issue with jargon — “reaccommodating passengers”, “policies for incentivising volunteers”, and so on — I think they finally got it right on the fourth attempt.
The second statement that Munoz issued had one sentence that caught my eye — “Our employees followed established procedures for dealing with situations like this.” That one statement encapsulates a serious problem that nearly all larger companies have, one that start-ups should always be on the lookout for as they grow bigger and bigger in size. That one statement shows how much procedures and processes were running the company, as opposed to how a company should ideally be run — by smart humans making smart decisions.
The reason processes tend to run large companies is because the takeover happens slowly and imperceptibly over time. The company does not even notice it’s happening. And then, it is suddenly too late. Much like that urban legend about frogs allowing themselves to be slowly boiled alive, never trying to save themselves, and eventually getting boiled to death.
Processes are not altogether bad. It often simplifies mundane decision-making. But it works well only as long as the people implementing the process understand the reasoning behind the process. And in a small start-up with only a handful of employees, every employee is almost assured to know why a certain process is being followed. However, as the start-up grows, and newer and newer employees join in, the mechanics of the process is easily learnt. The logic, not so much.
While I make it sound inevitable, this does not mean that start-ups must resign themselves to the evil of processes running them as they grow bigger. Funnily enough, the solution might lie in yet another process. Or a meta-process, to be precise. Make it a regular habit to always review every process the company has for its efficacy, especially for how it handles corner cases that have been newly encountered. And as the start-up grows bigger, there is a simple trick that every founder, or someone in senior management can use. If at any point in time, someone in the company says “But we followed the process!” while discussing something that went wrong, immediately reply with a “Why?” And then fix the process, right there.
In this weekly column, we discuss the start-up workplace. Thejaswi Udupa heads product and technology for an online building materials marketplace
