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The Unmeasured Cost
of Human Friction
In our experience in working with organizations large and small, even well-designed processes underperform when human friction is present.
Human friction introduces execution variability that standard process tools don’t always surface, however, it directly impacts flow, quality, and execution:
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assumptions replace shared understanding
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conversations are avoided or delayed
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cognitive load and fatigue reduce reliability
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workarounds emerge to compensate for people, not process
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decisions are forced upward​
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Human friction represents an often unmeasured loss between designed process performance and actual execution.
Human friction creates hidden problems in how work gets done, even when the process looks fine. A process can look good on paper and still break down because of how people carry it out.
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Human friction causes loss through miscommunication, hesitation, resistance, and poor follow-through.​ Some of the biggest problems are not in the process itself, but in how people work within it.
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Before you can reduce it, you need to see where it shows up and understand its impact.
How much is friction is costing your organization?