Something in your operation does not quite work. A system cannot do the thing you need, two tools do not talk to each other, a report comes out in the wrong format, an approval has no proper route. So someone clever and helpful invents a workaround. They export the data by hand and re-key it into the other system. They keep a private spreadsheet that fills the gap. They add a manual step that stitches the broken join together. It works. The immediate problem goes away, and everyone moves on. The workaround was meant to be temporary, a patch to hold things together until the real fix arrived. The real fix rarely arrives.
What arrives instead is permanence. The temporary patch quietly becomes part of how the work is done. New people are taught it as if it were the official process. It spreads, it hardens, and a few years later it is load-bearing: remove it and something breaks, but nobody quite remembers why it exists or that it was ever supposed to be temporary. Most operations are not run by their systems. They are run by a thick layer of these workarounds, and the cost of that layer is almost entirely invisible until you go looking for it.
The temporary fix that outlives the problem
A workaround is born from a reasonable instinct. There is a gap between what the system does and what the work needs, and someone bridges it by hand rather than waiting for the gap to be fixed properly. In the moment that is exactly the right call, because the work has to get done today and the proper fix is a project nobody has scoped. The problem is not that the workaround gets created. It is that nothing ever triggers its removal. The original reason it existed may disappear, the system may even get upgraded to do the thing natively, but the manual step stays, because no one is watching for the moment it became unnecessary. A workaround has a clear birth and almost never has a death.
Why nobody ever removes them
Workarounds survive because the incentives all point towards leaving them alone. Keeping one costs a little time every day, spread thinly across whoever performs it, so it never shows up as a line item anyone owns. Removing one, by contrast, is a visible piece of work with an obvious cost and an uncertain payoff, and it competes for attention against things that feel more urgent. The person who does the manual step is often not the person who could authorise fixing it, and the person who could authorise the fix usually does not know the step exists. So the workaround sits in a blind spot: too small for anyone senior to see, too embedded for anyone junior to challenge, and free enough day to day that removing it never reaches the top of a list.
The cost is real, it is just hidden
Each individual workaround is cheap, which is exactly why they are dangerous in aggregate. Every one of them is a small, permanent tax on time, paid daily and forever. Every one is a point of fragility, because manual steps get skipped, mistyped, or done differently by different people. Every one is a piece of undocumented knowledge that lives in a particular person's head, so when that person is on leave or leaves for good, a part of the operation quietly stops working. And every one adds to the onboarding tax, because a new hire has to learn not just the real system but the whole informal layer of patches on top of it. None of this appears on any dashboard. It shows up as a vague sense that everything takes longer than it should and depends on a few people more than it should, which is precisely the feeling that a workaround layer produces.
Finding the workarounds you have stopped seeing
The first difficulty in dealing with workarounds is that the people doing them no longer experience them as workarounds. They are just the job. So you cannot find them by asking whether anyone has any workarounds; you find them by watching the actual work and looking for the manual joins. Where is data being copied from one place to another by hand? Where does a spreadsheet sit between two systems that ought to talk directly? Which steps exist only because a system cannot do something, or because a rule lives in someone's memory rather than in the software? Each of those is a candidate. For each one, the question worth asking is not how do we do this faster, but why does this step exist at all, and what would have to change for it to disappear. Some will turn out to be genuinely necessary. Many will turn out to be scar tissue from a problem that was solved years ago.
A worked example
A finance team we worked with was closing their month a full week later than they wanted to, and everyone assumed the software was simply slow. When we sat with them through an actual close, the delay was not in the software at all. It was in a chain of workarounds that had accreted over years. One report was exported and reformatted by hand because, at some point, a downstream system had needed it that way; the downstream system had since changed, but the reformatting continued. Figures were re-keyed between two tools that, it turned out, could now be connected directly. A reconciliation everyone dreaded existed only to catch errors introduced by an earlier manual step, so it was a workaround guarding against another workaround. None of these had been decisions. They were all sensible patches whose reasons had expired. We removed or automated the ones whose original purpose was gone and connected the two systems that should have been talking, and the close came in days earlier, not because anyone worked faster but because a layer of invisible, obsolete work had been lifted off the team.
Retire the patches before you scale the process
Workarounds are not a sign of a badly run operation. They are a sign of a working one, because they are what people build to keep things moving when the system falls short. The danger is only in letting them accumulate unexamined until the informal layer is doing more of the work than the formal one. The habit worth building is periodic and simple: look at the manual steps in your important processes, ask of each one why it still exists, and retire the ones whose reason has gone. It is unglamorous work, and it is some of the highest-return work available, because every obsolete patch you remove gives back time, removes a point of failure, and makes the operation a little less dependent on the few people who remember how all the pieces are held together.
Finding the workarounds that have quietly become your process, and deciding which to retire, automate, or fix at the root, is exactly what our workflow optimisation work is built around: stripping the informal layer back until the operation runs on its systems again, not on memory and manual patches. Book a discovery call and we will help you find where the work is really going.
Frequently asked questions
What is an operational workaround?
An operational workaround is a manual step people invent to bridge a gap between what a system does and what the work actually needs. It might be exporting data and re-keying it into another tool, keeping a private spreadsheet that fills a hole in the official software, or adding an informal approval route because the real one does not exist. Workarounds are usually created for good reasons and solve a genuine problem in the moment. The issue is that they are almost always meant to be temporary and almost never removed, so over time they build into an informal layer of manual work that the operation quietly comes to depend on.
Why do temporary workarounds become permanent?
Because nothing ever triggers their removal. A workaround has a clear reason to be created, the work has to get done and the proper fix is not ready, but there is no equivalent moment that forces anyone to take it away again. The daily cost of keeping it is small and spread across whoever performs it, so it never becomes anyone's problem to solve, while removing it is visible, effortful work competing against more urgent things. Often the person doing the manual step cannot authorise a real fix, and the person who could does not know the step exists. So the workaround settles into a blind spot and stays there, long after the original reason for it has gone.
How much do workarounds actually cost?
Individually almost nothing, which is why they accumulate, but collectively a great deal. Each one is a small permanent tax on time, paid every day it is performed. Each is a point of fragility, since manual steps get skipped, mistyped, or done inconsistently. Each is usually undocumented knowledge held in one person's head, so it becomes key-person risk the moment that person is unavailable. And each adds to how long it takes to train someone new, because they must learn the informal patches as well as the real system. None of this shows up on a dashboard; it shows up as the persistent sense that everything takes longer and depends on a few people more than it should.
How do we get rid of workarounds?
Start by finding them, which is harder than it sounds, because the people performing them no longer see them as workarounds; they are just the job. Watch the real work and look for the manual joins: data copied by hand between systems, spreadsheets sitting between tools that should connect, steps that exist only because software cannot do something or because a rule lives in memory. For each one, ask why it exists and what would need to change for it to disappear, rather than just how to do it faster. Then retire the ones whose original reason has gone, automate or connect the ones that are bridging a real gap, and fix at the root the problems that keep generating new patches. The goal is to get the operation running on its systems again rather than on an informal layer of manual work.