Inadequate compensation for poor experiences
Insufficient compensation authority guidelines
FA-03
Agency-Authority Mismatch
Systemic Anatomy
Systemic Description
Frontline staff are held accountable for customer outcomes but denied the system permissions, budget authority, or decision rights required to resolve issues without escalation.
Root Cause Type
Organizational Authority Design
Why It Recurs
Centralized risk controls remove discretion from operational roles to minimize variance, fraud, and unauthorized expenditure.
Governance Failure
Hierarchical decision structures concentrate authority at management levels that cannot scale to real-time operational volume.
Scope Boundary
Does not explain staff competence, attitude, training quality, or hiring standards. Only explains friction caused by structural denial of authority despite assigned responsibility.
Structural Risk Profile
Decision Frequency
medium
How often decisions of this type are made in the affected context.
Blast Radius
localized
The scope and scale of impact when this friction manifests.
Reversibility
costly
The ease with which decisions affected by this friction can be undone.
Time to Impact
immediate
The delay between decision and observable consequence.
Decision Fallout
Typical Decisions
- Removing override capabilities from frontline terminal software
- Requiring manager approval for service recovery actions below a trivial dollar threshold
Delayed Effects
- Escalation queues overwhelm management capacity during disruptions
- Frontline staff develop learned helplessness and disengagement
Early Warning Signals
- High frequency of 'I need to ask my manager' in customer interactions
- Service recovery failing due to approval wait times
Manifestations
Poor handling of negative experiences
Limited billing dispute resolution empowerment
Poor response to complaints
Poor service recovery training and empowerment
Resolution Boundary
Decision Level
executive
This friction requires executive resolution because it involves redesigning organizational authority structures and risk control frameworks that are embedded in hierarchical reporting relationships. Operational management cannot redistribute authority it does not possess, and cross-functional coordination cannot resolve vertical power concentration.
This friction cannot be resolved locally.
Type of Change Required
Authority Redistribution
- This friction persists because authority is concentrated at management levels that cannot scale to operational volume. The required change involves explicitly delegating decision rights to frontline roles commensurate with their assigned accountability for customer outcomes.
Risk Control Framework Recalibration
- Centralized approval structures exist to minimize variance and fraud risk. The friction continues until risk controls are redesigned to separate high-consequence decisions requiring oversight from low-consequence decisions that can be safely delegated with appropriate guardrails.
System Permission Architecture
- Permission denial at the software level enforces centralized control regardless of organizational intent. The change required involves redesigning system access controls to enable frontline discretion within defined parameters rather than blanket restriction.
What Does Not Work
- Training staff to feel empowered fails when actual decision authority remains centralized. This approach treats the problem as psychological rather than structural, leaving unchanged the permission and budget constraints that prevent action.
- Attempts to speed up approval workflows fail because they address throughput rather than authority distribution. Faster escalation still requires frontline staff to wait for management decisions, preserving the structural bottleneck.
- Publishing guidelines for staff to follow fail when execution requires permissions staff do not possess. Guidelines without corresponding decision rights create frustration rather than resolution.
AERIM
AERIM is the operating system designed to resolve the structural conditions described above. It addresses the governance, coordination, and decision architecture failures that the Friction Atlas documents. AERIM operates at the resolution boundary where local fixes fail and systemic change is required.