How harmless workarounds become cultural laws

Bullshit never arrives as policy. It slips in as convenience, grows through repetition, and eventually becomes part of the culture. It begins small, grows quietly, and eventually becomes indistinguishable from standard practice.

What starts as a clever workaround or a harmless shortcut evolves into a full-fledged operating model – one so embedded that few remember how it began.

Stage 1: Emergence

Every system of nonsense starts with a workaround. Someone removes a step to save time, designs a quick template to bridge a gap, or invents a meeting to align a confused team.

The intention is practical and immediate. The workaround solves a momentary problem – and because it “worked once,” it becomes tempting to repeat.

Stage 2: Adoption

Others observe the workaround and follow it. Not because they believe in it, but because it signals action, protects them politically, or helps them conform.

Repetition creates familiarity, and familiarity creates credibility. Before long, teams adopt the practice simply because it has become the path of least resistance.

Stage 3: Institutionalization

Once a behavior reaches a sufficient scale, it earns formal recognition. Someone writes a guideline. Someone else adds a review step. A new meeting slot appears on calendars every week.

The workaround becomes a recurring process – now protected by templates, governance vocabulary, and well-meaning administrators.

Stage 4: Legitimization

Budgets follow. KPIs attach themselves. Sponsors emerge.

Narrative momentum turns the practice into a strategic asset, complete with metrics that measure everything except effectiveness. The original intent fades into the background. The ritual takes on a life of its own, supported by people who were never part of its origins.

Stage 5: Permanence

Eventually, the system survives entirely on habit. No one remembers why it exists. No one questions whether it still adds value.

The organization defends it simply because it’s familiar. The ritual becomes part of the culture – performed automatically, protected instinctively, and repeated endlessly.

From Workaround to Cultural Laws

Bullshit becomes a system not through malice but through momentum. Once a behavior is repeated, endorsed, and framed as useful, it embeds itself – long after its logic has evaporated.

The satirical weekly series, The Natural Laws of Bullshit, discusses such cultural laws through dark humour, drawing on the memoirs of the inner witness of a team member who was a reliable, dependable constant. Read the story of their origin here.

Recognizing these stages helps leaders challenge rituals before they become irreversible machinery.

Tomorrow Morning:

• Challenge one ritual nobody remembers the purpose of: ask “Why do we still do this?”
• Identify a workaround that is quietly becoming a “standard” – decide whether it deserves to survive.
• Stop one activity that only continues because it has a meeting slot.