Gatekeeping should never be a process

I keep finding situations where creative solutions are denied because the gatekeepers are managing a process and not evaluating the situation as unique. From publishing to management to job recruitment, it seems the process constantly gets in the way, ensuring that the solution boils down to more of the same, more of what we already know and what we already have. That is what process delivers. Is that what is required?

Harry Potter was rejected by many publishers because it was about boy wizards and there was no market for books about boy wizards because the publishers didn't publish any. I saw an Internal Communications Management job advertised by a Recruitment Agency where their best fit would be someone with the same understanding of internal communications as them - limited, restricted and ineffectual. I see organisational innovation programmes that are so process driven that they run counter to their objective. And I see customer service where the individual nature of the customer is denied by the proscribed process.

Organisations do not trust their staff to make judgements. So they should train their staff and take risks. Processes are never going to provide the best answer.

Funny thing, truth

So how did the Universe begin?, I am rarely asked. What is the truth of the matter?
And I would reply that matter is the simple aggregation of composite energy in three dimensions of space and one of time; that everything began with energy in a pure, undifferentiated form that was so pure that it needed neither dimensions of time nor space; that such purity could not exist so that it cooled and slowed and created dimensions; and, in that diminution, the energy became stretched and split over different dimensions of space and time; and that the cooling soup of energy in our bubble of dimensions collided and collated to form basic proto-leptons and quasi-quarks that recombined and were charged and so on and so on; and that our dimensions intercept the planes of other energy from the creation but that this energy is on only two dimensions of space and two of time; and that there are other interactions; and that quarks formed in different parts of the universe at different times will be different; and that most of the energy from the creation is in the other dimensions; and that there is a lot more but I lost your attention long ago.

And the point is? For us to regard something as true, we must regard that truth as having some utility. So it will be years before anyone realises that this definition of physics is useful. And, in the field of corporate communications, the necessity of effective communications is often regarded with the same raised eyebrow as someone explaining their theory on the origin of the Universe.