Leading at Light Speed is a new leadership book by Eric Douglas detailing the 10 Quantum Leaps to build trust, spark innovation, and create a high-performing organization. Eric addresses The Danger of Workarounds in Chapter Four.

Decisions can be very difficult to manage in settings where people aren’t used to accepting responsibility – or where the structure works against it. The accountability of position (i.e., what the position is accounatable for) and responsibilty (what the person can actually do) can wildly go astray. This occurs often in public agencies, and often is due to what we call “nichifying.”

For botanists, biologists, and other scientists, the idea of “nichifying” is central to understanding how evolution works. Plants and animals are in a constant struggle to find and occupy the safest and easiest niche for their survival. As the climate changes, for example, plants move to wetter or drier ground. As predators increase in number, animals migrate to less dangerous territory.

Within organizations, people “nichify” as well. When it’s positive, people seek niches where their talent is valued, they feel productive, where they feel they can best contribute. In these cases, nichifying works to the organization’s advantage.

But nichifying has a negative side. In bureaucracies, it manifests in the form of “workarounds” – in other words, when people take on the responsibilities of someone else, generally because they excel at it or enjoy it more. The word will get out that, “Hey, if you really want to get that done, you’d better see Dorothy in Accounting. Even though she’s not in charge of Procurement, everything passes through her.”

Public agencies are prone to “nichifying” because civil service rules prevent people from moving easily to find their best niche. People who have the skills to do the work often receive the work responsibilities, rather than those in the appropriate roles. Workarounds result in “shadow organizations” – an informal organization on top of the formal one you see on paper. Where “shadow organizations” have been allowed to flourish, the result is confusion about roles and responsibilities as well as convoluted decision making.

For example, financial decisions at one California state agency were divided between three departments. The Finance Department covers both Accounts Receivable and Payable.. The Operations Department handled capital expenditures. And the Department of Planning dealt with budgets, planning and sophisticated financing. People within the organization understood who did what – but no one was accountable for financial performance. No surprise, then, that this agency had very poor financial performance overall.

What can you do to manage decisions well in such a setting? For example, you can take extra time with people, which builds trust and support for making changes to the work process. You can fight to put people where their talents can best be aligned with their real job responsibilities. In addition, you can continuously search for opportunities to recruit and promote talented members of the organization. If not, the talented individuals are likely to leave – creating a bigger tangle of bureaucracy.

Discover how well your organization measures up to the 10 Quantum Leaps with this free work survey.