Painting harbours taught me about pruning processes

Processes are meant to make outcomes predictable, but they often survive long after the problem that created them disappears. When a team stops seeing the original obstacle, the rituals stay in place and the effort to get work done rises. This mismatch is the hidden cost of unchecked process creep.

The story of an Icelandic harbour illustrates the point. A worker painted a grey electrical box yellow by accident and the crew kept the box yellow ever after, never questioning why. The colour became a habit, a procedure without a remembered reason. The same thing happens in tech organisations when a meeting or a checklist is introduced to solve a specific pain point and then never revisited.

As organisations grow, they tend to add more meetings, more gates, more approvals instead of pruning the ones that no longer add value. The result is a Jenga tower of processes that makes predictability harder, not easier. Each extra step adds friction and obscures the original intent.

The practical takeaway is simple: capture the "why" whenever a new process is introduced. Store the reason in a place that the team can review, and schedule regular checks to see if the original problem still exists. When the rationale fades, retire the process before it becomes waste. By doing this, leaders keep teams focused on outcomes instead of endless ceremony.