Hootsuite named a 'Czar of Bad Systems' to scrap rules like the $200 T-shirt approval

In a March 2017 Fast Company piece, Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes describes an employee who wanted to send a customer a logo T-shirt. By the time approvals were done, counting everyone up the org chart who had to weigh in, Holmes says the cost of the shirt had ballooned to at least $200. In the company's early days managers had to approve swag requests, a rule that became cumbersome as headcount grew toward 1,000.

Senior director of technology Noel spent several days chasing his manager, the CTO, for sign-off on a $15 gift. He then spent a day or two persuading finance and marketing to drop the formal approval rule and trust people's discretion. Holmes says that across a company of 1,000 people the change saves hundreds of employee hours a year.

That prompted the 'Czar of Bad Systems', an unofficial role, with Noel volunteering for the first tour of duty on top of his day job. Employees with a problem they cannot fix, even with help from their manager, can contact the Czar, who looks at processes that have outlived their usefulness.

Bad systems end up in a 'corporate Bermuda Triangle' that no one monitors and no one is empowered to change.

A rule built for a small company becomes costly at 1,000 people.

A single reachable owner makes fixing a process cheaper than complying with it.

Processes decay into an ownerless corner; naming an owner with cross-company authority gets obsolete rules corrected instead of merely complied with.

The article reports the swag-approval rule was scrapped and that the Czar role had just been set up, with Noel as the first holder. It gives no figures for savings beyond Holmes's estimate of hundreds of hours a year from the swag change.