Every workaround is a loan. The decision nobody made is the principal, and the interest gets paid every week, by people who never agreed to borrow. The last briefing in the series is about what that costs, and why a new tool won't clear it.
What it argues
- Operational debt is the interest on decisions nobody made. Unlike technical debt, it has no backlog and no owner, so it's nobody's job to see it.
- The interest gets paid in four places: the spreadsheet beside the system, the meeting that reconciles, the person everyone asks, and the exception handled by hand.
- Poor execution transfers. A new system inherits every undefined decision on day one.
- “We need a new tool” names a product, not a problem. Software evaluations compare every feature except the job.
- Most systems end up doing jobs nobody gave them. Every spreadsheet beside them is a job description, and behind every job is a decision.
- You pay it down by holding the series' four conversations late, for the systems you already have: role, decisions, resourcing, and ownership.