Something that may not make sense at first may be more rational when you understand the context of why it's being done that way.
There’s a hackneyed joke that asks, “Why do drive-through ATMs have Braille dots on the keys?” After all, visually impaired people really shouldn’t be driving, so what would they be doing at a drive-through ATM? The answer to this provides an important lesson in how managers think.
There are actually three answers. The most noble of the three is that a visually impaired person may be riding in the driver’s side passenger seat, being given a ride by a friend, and they need to stop at an ATM but want to use the drive-through option to save time. Without the Braille dots, the visually impaired passenger would have to ask the driver for help and give out information like a PIN number. The most practical of the three answers is that The Americans with Disabilities Act requires it.
But there’s a reason that applies even if the caring and the law didn’t address this: economics. ATM keys are made by die casting. The metal keys are put into a mold, shaped, and stamped. Banks would naturally offer keys with Braille at walk-up ATMs, since visually impaired customers can certainly walk to a bank and have the same needs for an ATM as everyone else (speed, convenience, 24-hour access). For manufacturers of ATMs, it’s cheaper to have a single mold, and produce a single\ machine that can be put anywhere (walk-up or drive-through), rather than to have separate molds and less fungible inventory.
But what does any of this have to do with herding cats, I mean managing people? Fungibility (meaning interchangeable) is important in bringing down costs. When taking a NYC cab (or these days rideshare) the cars may be different in style or upkeep but for my needs, getting me from point A to point B, they are fungible. Maybe if I were rolling up to a red-carpet event, I would want a limo, not because it gets me there faster or safer, but because I would want the signal of luxury, beyond the benefit of transportation; but for everyday use, any car will do.
A related example is why brides spend lots of money on wedding dresses they’ll wear only once while grooms rent a lower cost tuxedo they could likely reuse. The answer, as succinctly described by Robert Frank on the PBS news website, is that because tuxedos tend to be standard, and based on a few measurements, many men will rent them over the lifecycle of the tux, so any tux can be repeatedly rented. A wedding gown is typically more of a custom fit (many more measurements need to match) and has more variety (different brides want different styles of dress) so it cannot be amortized as efficiently by multiple brides, keeping the cost of even a rental very high.
People prefer things that are cheap, and more fungible usually means cheaper. Managers are people. They prefer a one-size fits all. They don’t want to have one set of rules or practices for one team (walk-up ATMs) and another for a different team (drive-through ATMs). They want, to the extent possible, one ring, er, methodology, to rule them all.
This is why sometimes a manager will make you jump through her hoops, send things in a format that works for her, even if it’s not totally ideal for you. If she’s managing three teams and has to look at three different project management tools, it’s more taxing (expensive) for her. If she has one tool that works for two teams and is a bit of a pain for your team, but can work, that’s why she’s making you adjust, and not her.
There’s a limit to this, however. The Braille dots don’t really interfere with non-visually impaired people using the machines. If they did, if there was economic cost, say visually unimpaired people would not use the machines because it was hard or uncomfortable to use with the Braille dots, then there would be an economic cost to the bank, and they might be willing to pay the higher cost of an ATM machine from a vendor who has to maintain two molds and two sets of inventories.
There may be a point where if it saves the manager one hour a week but costs ten people on a team three hours a week each, that the manager should consider bearing the cost himself. But if it’s not that big, remembering that the manager’s “cost” per hour is higher (including time lost from context switching), the manager will often do something that may at first seem as out of place as Braille dots on a drive-through ATM’s buttons.
Whenever you’re developing a process, you need to consider the costs. The costs of people following the process and the cost of people consuming the output of the process. But when calculating these costs, remember there may be secondary costs, like having to switch between optimally efficient tools or processes that may overshadow the cost of standardization. As always, it's best not to assume, but to have the discussion; especially since what may have made sense in the past may not do so today or in the future. If you have an example of a tool or process that seems subpar in and out itself, but which makes sense in the bigger picture, please do share.
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