Chapter 2: Find the Costly Friction

I use friction for a place where useful work becomes slower, more expensive, less reliable, harder to scale, or more dangerous than it needs to be. It gives us something concrete to examine.

A successful company can carry that burden for years. People make the result happen through extra meetings, personal spreadsheets, duplicated checks, memory, apologies, and work after hours. From a distance, the process looks healthy because the job gets done. Spend time with the people doing it and you may discover how much effort they contribute to keep it that way.