The Hidden Cost of Constant Compensation

A deadline is met. The client receives what was promised. The team reports another successful delivery.

What the result may not show is the work required to make it happen: a late-night correction, an unresolved disagreement absorbed by one person, missing information chased repeatedly, or a founder who made the decision because no one else could.

The output looks healthy. The operating conditions may not be.

Why visible performance is an incomplete measure

People can preserve results under pressure by investing more effort, narrowing attention, and postponing other demands. The work of psychologist G. Robert Hockey on compensatory control provides one account of how performance can remain stable while the cost of maintaining it rises.

This does not mean that every demanding period is pathological or unjustified. Extra effort is sometimes appropriate. The issue is whether an exceptional workaround has become a permanent operating requirement.

When fixing the problem conceals the problem

Anita Tucker and Amy Edmondson's research into operational failures in hospitals showed how front-line workarounds can restore immediate service while leaving the underlying organizational failure intact. The people doing the workaround were responding to legitimate needs. The failure lay partly in how little of the operational evidence reached a process capable of making lasting improvements.

The same distinction is useful in businesses. A leader resolves a recurring handoff. Did the experience produce an improved process, or merely another expectation that the leader will resolve it next time?

In one case, intervention increases system capability. In the other, the system becomes dependent on intervention.

The private cost of public success

The burden can be distributed across attention, recovery, relationships, or strategic work never undertaken. A successful quarter can therefore conceal deteriorating operating conditions.

A founder who is always available may earn the reputation of being committed, but may also prevent managers from developing independent judgment. A team that regularly delivers through overtime may appear well staffed because the additional effort never enters the resource plan.

Competence is not the problem. Invisibility is.

A better question than 'How do I become more resilient?'

Resilience can be useful in genuine disruption. It is a poor substitute for correcting a persistent gap.

Ask: What did this result actually require? Which portion of that effort was exceptional? Who knows about the repeated failure? And what authority exists to change the conditions that made another rescue necessary?

The answers may point to process, staffing, governance, boundaries, or an individual's repeated assumption of responsibility. Often several interact.

For leaders who recognize their own contribution to the repetition, Unblocked in Ten Weeks offers a focused way to examine that operating pattern. For organizations, the first response may instead be changing the system itself.

Sources and intellectual lineage

Tucker, A. L., Edmondson, A. C., and Spear, S. (2002). When problem solving prevents organizational learning. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 15(2), 122–137.
Tucker, A. L., and Edmondson, A. C. (2003). Why Hospitals Don't Learn from Failures. California Management Review, 45(2), 55–72.
Hockey, G. R. J. (1997). Compensatory control in the regulation of human performance under stress and high workload. Biological Psychology, 45(1–3), 73–93.
Adapted in argument, not duplicated in text, from Oscar Trelles, What You Keep Compensating For Never Has to Change.