While it’s easy to see how a rigid procedure can strip agency from frontline workers—whether at Schiphol Airport in 1999 or on an airline gate—there’s a deeper point worth emphasizing: processes are not villains in themselves but the tools we use to achieve collective goals.
At their best, formalized workflows capture institutional knowledge, ensure consistency, and guard against the whims of any single individual. When they “misfire” in rare edge cases, that usually means one of two things: either the process wasn’t designed to handle that scenario, or the mechanisms for handling exceptions were missing or poorly defined. In other words, a process gone awry doesn’t discredit the very idea of process; it reveals gaps in its design.
Far from being an antithesis to human judgment, exception-handling should be built into every robust system. A well-constructed process explicitly defines who has the authority to deviate, under what circumstances, and how that deviation is documented and reviewed. If you leave out that “escape hatch,” you don’t just create an accountability sink—you create brittle machinery that can’t adapt when reality steps outside its narrow lanes.
It’s equally dangerous, though, to romanticize the notion of solitary moral actors as the ultimate safeguard. Humans carry their own biases, incomplete information, and emotional states, all of which can lead to inconsistent or unfair decisions. What we really need is a thoughtful blend: processes that enshrine lessons from past cases and guardrails against reckless behavior, alongside well-defined channels for human discretion when the unexpected happens.
In practice, designing accountability back into our systems means three things. First, build clear exception frameworks—authority, scope, documentation, and feedback loops must all be spelled out. Second, adopt blameless post-mortems that treat errors as opportunities to strengthen the process rather than occasions for finger-pointing. Third, maintain transparency through audits and stakeholder reviews so that when the system does stumble, we know exactly where to look and whom to consult.
In the end, we shouldn’t view processes as cold, unfeeling machines set against human ethics. Instead, they are the scaffolding that makes large-scale cooperation possible. A more nuanced perspective admits that processes can fail—but also insists that with the right exception paths and accountability measures, we can harness both the consistency of systems and the wisdom of individuals.
I agree—processes are an efficient way to offload the computation/analysis, from being done in the moment (when time is most valuable) to being done during the planning/designing stages (when time comes very cheaply).
While it’s easy to see how a rigid procedure can strip agency from frontline workers—whether at Schiphol Airport in 1999 or on an airline gate—there’s a deeper point worth emphasizing: processes are not villains in themselves but the tools we use to achieve collective goals.
At their best, formalized workflows capture institutional knowledge, ensure consistency, and guard against the whims of any single individual. When they “misfire” in rare edge cases, that usually means one of two things: either the process wasn’t designed to handle that scenario, or the mechanisms for handling exceptions were missing or poorly defined. In other words, a process gone awry doesn’t discredit the very idea of process; it reveals gaps in its design.
Far from being an antithesis to human judgment, exception-handling should be built into every robust system. A well-constructed process explicitly defines who has the authority to deviate, under what circumstances, and how that deviation is documented and reviewed. If you leave out that “escape hatch,” you don’t just create an accountability sink—you create brittle machinery that can’t adapt when reality steps outside its narrow lanes.
It’s equally dangerous, though, to romanticize the notion of solitary moral actors as the ultimate safeguard. Humans carry their own biases, incomplete information, and emotional states, all of which can lead to inconsistent or unfair decisions. What we really need is a thoughtful blend: processes that enshrine lessons from past cases and guardrails against reckless behavior, alongside well-defined channels for human discretion when the unexpected happens.
In practice, designing accountability back into our systems means three things. First, build clear exception frameworks—authority, scope, documentation, and feedback loops must all be spelled out. Second, adopt blameless post-mortems that treat errors as opportunities to strengthen the process rather than occasions for finger-pointing. Third, maintain transparency through audits and stakeholder reviews so that when the system does stumble, we know exactly where to look and whom to consult.
In the end, we shouldn’t view processes as cold, unfeeling machines set against human ethics. Instead, they are the scaffolding that makes large-scale cooperation possible. A more nuanced perspective admits that processes can fail—but also insists that with the right exception paths and accountability measures, we can harness both the consistency of systems and the wisdom of individuals.
I agree—processes are an efficient way to offload the computation/analysis, from being done in the moment (when time is most valuable) to being done during the planning/designing stages (when time comes very cheaply).