The Instinct of the Builder
The Loose Screw
Cameron J.-M. builds escape rooms. He builds rooms where people solve puzzles. He looks at a magnetic lock. The lock is loose. He tightens the screw. He does not ask a manager. He tightens the screw because the screw is loose.
He does not write a report. The screw stays tight. The game continues. If he waited for a meeting, the lock would fall. The lock would hit a customer. The customer would be angry. Cameron J.-M. knows that small things keep the room safe. He knows that small actions prevent large failures.
The Friction of the Desk
The office worker sits at a desk. The desk is gray. The worker sees a label on the screen. The label is wrong. The label says “Process” but it should say “Complete.” The worker knows how to change the label. The worker has the password. The worker opens the code. The worker stops.
The worker remembers the new rules. The rules are called the Governance Layer. The rules say every change needs a ticket. The ticket needs a description. The ticket needs an impact analysis. The ticket needs a signature from a manager.
The manager is in a different city. The manager is in a meeting. The worker closes the code. The label stays wrong. The label will stay wrong for a long time.
I used to love charts. I made charts for everything. I believed the charts kept the company safe. I believed the process ensured quality. I was wrong. I was wrong about the value of control. I thought that if we tracked every movement, we would eliminate every mistake.
I thought oversight was the same as care. I watched the charts and I missed the decay. I missed the small things that were breaking because no one was allowed to fix them anymore.
The Committee of Big Things
The company wanted to be professional. The company wanted to avoid risks. The company added the governance layer. The layer was a committee. The committee met on Tuesdays. The committee looked at documents. The documents were long.
The documents explained why a button should be blue. The documents explained why a word should be changed. The committee does not like small things. The committee likes big things. The committee likes things that move the needle.
A spelling mistake does not move the needle. A confusing sentence does not move the needle. A minor lag in the menu does not move the needle. The committee looks at the small fix. The committee asks for a cost-benefit analysis.
The worker realizes the analysis takes four hours. The fix takes four minutes. The worker decides the fix is not worth the effort.
This is how the product starts to fail. It does not fail with a bang. It fails with a thousand small ignored problems. The interface becomes cluttered. The labels become lies. The users become frustrated.
Governance as a Brake
A digital platform needs to be fast. A platform like
relies on speed. It relies on automated systems. It serves people who want to move quickly. In the Thai market, people value convenience. They value safety.
They want their deposits to happen now. They want their withdrawals to happen now. If a button is slow, the user notices. If the system is opaque, the user leaves.
A brake is a safety tool.
A brake is a dangerous obstacle.
In a fast environment, governance is a brake. A brake is good for a car on a hill. A brake is bad for a car on a highway. The governance layer treats every change like a dangerous turn. It treats a typo like a structural failure.
It forces the developer to treat the small good act as a crime. The developer learns to be quiet. The developer learns to ignore the loose screw.
I once waved at a man on the street. He was waving. I waved back. Then I realized he was waving at someone behind me. I felt foolish. I felt like I had stepped into a space where I did not belong.
This is how the employee feels under heavy governance. They reach out to fix a problem. They reach out to help the user. Then they realize the process does not want their help. The process wants their compliance. They pull their hand back. They feel foolish for trying.
The cost of a fix is now the cost of the paperwork. If the paperwork costs fifty dollars and the fix saves five dollars, the fix is a loss. The company thinks it is saving money by stopping “unauthorized” work.
But the company is losing the maintenance. Maintenance is the quiet work of keeping things good. Maintenance is the oil in the machine. Governance is the sand.
The Stagnant Experience
The committee thinks they are protecting the brand. They think they are ensuring a “unified experience.” They are actually ensuring a stagnant experience. No one is allowed to innovate on the small scale. No one is allowed to polish the edges.
The edges stay sharp. The edges cut the user. A team of twenty people can make twenty small fixes a day. That is four hundred fixes a month. In a year, that is nearly five thousand improvements. These improvements are free.
They are done in the gaps between big tasks. They are done because the employees care. When you add a governance layer, those five thousand improvements disappear. They are replaced by five big projects.
The five big projects are late. The five big projects are over budget. The five big projects do not fix the five thousand small problems.
The Scars of Control
The product becomes a museum of old mistakes. You can see the layers of different managers. You can see the spots where someone tried to fix something and gave up. The “help” text is from .
The “error” message is in a language the user does not speak. The login box is slightly off-center. These are the scars of governance.
“The homepage had a dead link. The link stayed dead for six months. The vice president was busy… looking at the strategy. The strategy did not include fixing dead links.”
– Internal Account, Synergy vs. Functionality
I worked at a place that required a vice president to approve any change to the homepage. The homepage had a dead link. The link stayed dead for . The vice president was busy. The vice president was looking at the strategy.
The strategy did not include fixing dead links. The strategy was about “synergy.” The users did not want synergy. The users wanted to click the link.
The Wall Between Builder and Building
We forget that quality is a habit. Quality is not a department. If you tell people they cannot be responsible for quality, they will stop being responsible for quality. They will do what the ticket says. They will do nothing more.
They will watch the ship leak. They will say that they did not have a ticket to plug the hole. The governance layer creates a wall between the builder and the building.
The builder no longer feels the wood. The builder no longer smells the paint. The builder only reads the blueprint. If the blueprint is wrong, the builder builds it wrong. The builder says it is not their job to correct the architect.
We need more people like Cameron J.-M. We need people who can see a loose screw and tighten it. We need organizations that trust their people to use a screwdriver. We need to lower the cost of the small good act.
If the paperwork is heavier than the tool, the tool will stay in the box. The paperwork is a heavy blanket that smothers the small fix.
Pursuing Excellence
The decay is invisible at first. It looks like a clean spreadsheet. It looks like a controlled environment. But the users feel the friction. The users find the small annoyances. They find the labels that make no sense. They find the buttons that lead nowhere.
They leave. They go to a place that feels alive. They go to a place where someone is allowed to care. I was wrong to think that more rules meant better results.
I was wrong to think that a committee could replace an individual with a conscience. A conscience sees the user. A committee sees the risk. You cannot build a great product by only avoiding risk. You build a great product by pursuing excellence in the small things.