Friction Reduction

Repeated searching, needless approvals, and explaining the same thing to a fourth audience can consume a working day without improving the work. We want to remove that burden. A process should not survive merely because nobody has been authorized to stop it.

AI makes this more pressing. When a person can prepare a useful comparison or build a first version themselves, a hierarchy that insists on translating the contribution through several layers becomes harder to defend. Making contribution easier should make the surrounding organization more useful too.

Some effort is part of the value

Working through an example can teach a person something that receiving the finished answer would not. A conversation can establish trust. A deliberate pause can give someone a meaningful choice. Removing those things may make the transaction faster while making the experience worse.

That does not give every awkward process an imaginary hidden virtue. The effort needs a purpose that matters to the people carrying it or receiving the result. They should have a say in how it works, its burden should fit its purpose, and it should be open to reconsideration. “For your own good” is not much of an explanation from someone who never has to fill in the form.

Follow the burden to its recipient

An AI summary is not a saving if everyone else now has to find the point inside it. A self-service tool is not an improvement if it moves an expert’s work onto someone who cannot do it. We want to know what gets easier, for whom, and what they can do with the room it creates.

Friction Should Earn Its Place explores the distinction. Our default is to remove the pointless work and protect the attention worth giving.

Original illustration generated with AI for this belief.