Agreed. Optimization for process over outcomes seems to be a recurring problem in large organizations. Unfortunately it's not hard to understand why decision maker's prefer this approach given the pressures of shareholders/voters. No one gets fired for following the process.
A similar issue was just discussed yesterday in a thread on Jeff Bezos' letter to shareholders:
"A common example is process as proxy. Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right. Gulp."
A similar issue was just discussed yesterday in a thread on Jeff Bezos' letter to shareholders:
"A common example is process as proxy. Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right. Gulp."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14107766