Abhishek Rungta

Last week, I was with a client who shared an experience that left me utterly shocked.

We’re building a large e-commerce marketplace project for them. As part of this, they needed a payment integration partner – someone who’d eventually process thousands of crores worth of transactions. Naturally, they approached one of India’s leading payment aggregators.

And guess what? They could not get through.

Here’s why: the payment aggregator’s onboarding team insisted on seeing a CIN number (Company Identification Number) on their company registration certificate. Now, this company is nearly 100 years old. Back then, CINs weren’t even a thing. While their number is available online, it wasn’t on their original registration document.

Despite having a valid CIN online, the team on-boarding team got lost in bureaucracy,  and refused to proceed. They were so fixated on the process that they missed the bigger picture – signing up a dream client. Imagine how much revenue this payment aggregator lost because someone couldn’t think beyond a rigid checklist.

I see examples like this all the time.

Just this morning, at the airport, I watched as a check-in counter spent 30 minutes processing a group of 12 people. Why? Because the system couldn’t allow more bags than passengers on a single PNR. Instead of solving this simply, the staff painstakingly went PNR by PNR, creating a long queue and frustrated customers.

The result? A poor experience for passengers and inefficiency for the airline.


Here’s what’s clear:

🔑 Processes are tools to achieve objectives – not obstacles.
🎯 Employees need to know the end goal, not just the steps in a manual.
💡 When empowered to tweak or bypass unnecessary steps, employees can create real value for the business and delight customers. And these are also opportunities to improve the process.

Think about it – how much invisible revenue is lost because of unnecessary friction in your business?


This problem isn’t new. In fact, it’s so common that experts have written books about it. I highly recommend “Subtract” and “The Friction Project” – both offer incredible insights on simplifying processes and removing bottlenecks.

Let’s face it – friction is expensive.

As leaders, our job is to ask: Does this process serve the outcome, or does it exist just because it always has?

Challenge the status quo. Remove the friction. And empower your team to do what really matters – delivering value.