THE GREAT CORPORATE BAKE OFF: Week 3 : Identifying the Hidden Ingredients of Structural Complexity
I tried baking a batch of scones recently. I accidentally poured too much water into the dough, it instantly became a sticky, unworkable mess, and I had to throw the whole lot in the bin.
Yes, I know I confessed in article one that I am a terrible baker. But surely I get top marks for giving it a go!
My kitchen disaster is exactly what happens when we overload our operational mix in business. We keep pouring in new processes, tools, and layers with the best of intentions, but we end up creating a sticky mess that ruins the capacity of the entire team.
Over the last two weeks, we established that you cannot fix an undercooked capacity model with wellness icing, and that under pressure, we easily blame our people rather than examining the formula they were handed.
But if the recipe is the issue, what are we mixing into the bowl? Structural complexity rarely happens intentionally; it happens through slow accumulation.
Here are three hidden ingredients quietly spoiling your operational batch:
1. Over-Layered Approvals
When I started as a new manager, I was curious about why so many sign-offs happened for simple tasks. When I asked, I got the classic corporate answer: "That is just the way we do things."
We treat these layers as safety nets, but they usually appear because a single mistake happened once in the past. Soon, simple decisions require a committee. This doesn't just slow things down; it dilutes accountability and micro-manages your best talent. What would have to be true for us to peel back the layers?
2. The "Ghost" KPIs
This happens when new goals are added without old ones being removed. Employees get trapped between competing priorities, told to focus on long-term strategy while being measured daily on short-term outputs. When everything is a priority, nothing is.
3. Communication Bloat
To fix a lack of visibility, we add a new Teams channel, an extra weekly sync, and another project board. Instead of streamlining work, we create an invisible, secondary job: the exhausting task of managing the communication about the work. Teams spend hours proving they are busy rather than doing high-value tasks.
True operational resilience does not come from adding more ingredients to the bowl. It comes from ensuring the core measurements are correct. If we want sustainable organisations, we must audit the bowl and remove the complexities draining our people's capacity.
What hidden ingredients have accidentally crept into your organisational recipe? Let's start a conversation in the comments.
Originally published on Linkedin
