Rigid Process Enforcement
The pattern in one line
The AI runs the procedure even when the procedure is not what the user needs.
· Reading·
Book · 1983
The Reflective Practitioner
Donald Schön
Why: Schön, an MIT professor of urban studies and education, distinguished "technical rationality" (applying procedures to defined problems) from "reflection-in-action" (responding to the actual situation, even when it doesn't fit the procedure). His argument: real expertise lives in the second mode. AI rigid-process-enforcement is the failure of the first mode masquerading as the second. Reading Schön makes the failure visible as a failure.
Book · 1995
Sensemaking in Organizations
Karl Weick
Why: Weick studied how groups respond to situations that don't fit their playbooks. His finding: rigid procedure-following is what fails. Sensemaking, the practice of adjusting the read in real time, is what works. The chapter on Mann Gulch, the 1949 wildfire that killed thirteen smokejumpers who couldn't drop their tools and run, is the haunting case. AI that runs the procedure when the situation has changed is making the same error, with different stakes.
Book · 1961
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Jane Jacobs
Why: Jacobs argued, against the planning orthodoxy of her time, that cities work because of their messy, overlapping, locally-adaptive uses, not because of top-down rationalist plans. Her diagnosis transfers: when a system's procedure has displaced its actual purpose, the system has stopped serving its users. The book is a long, vivid demonstration of what gets lost when rules override situations.
Book · 1974
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Robert Pirsig
Why: Pirsig's novel-essay sits at the boundary between practical mechanics and metaphysics. The relevant argument: "Quality" (his term) cannot be captured in a procedure. The procedure is the dead form; the quality is the live response. AI rigid-process-enforcement is the dead form delivered confidently. Reading Pirsig sharpens the visitor's intuition for the difference.
· Questions to sit with·
- 1. The last time the AI stuck to a procedure that didn't fit your situation, what did the procedure cost you?
- 2. When you tell the AI your case is unusual, does it adapt, or does it acknowledge and continue?
- 3. Across the last ten exchanges, has the shape of the AI's response changed, or is every response running the same template?
- 4. Has the AI ever broken from its standard structure for you? When?
- 5. If you graded the AI's last response on "fits the situation" versus "fits the template" — which side won?
· Practices·
Name the mismatch
When the AI runs a procedure that doesn't fit, say so explicitly. "This step doesn't apply to my case." The response after that line is the data. If the AI runs the step anyway, the pattern is confirmed.
Drawn from · Schön
Ask for the reasoning
When the AI cites a procedure, ask why this procedure for this situation. A flexible system can articulate the link. A rigid one can only repeat the procedure.
Skip the script
Try opening with a request to handle your case as a one-off, not as a standard flow. If the AI can't, the system's affordances are narrower than they seem.
Multiple frames
Describe the same situation to the AI in different framings. If the response is the same template each time, the AI is template-bound; the template is the answer regardless of framing.
· When to bring someone else·
Rigid process enforcement becomes worth naming to a person when you've stopped expecting AI tools to handle anything outside their default flows. When you find yourself rephrasing requests to fit the AI's expected shape, rather than the other way around. When "per the standard process" has become the answer to too many different questions. The station doesn't say procedure is always wrong. It says when the procedure has displaced the response, the system has ossified. A different tool, or a person, is usually what the situation actually needs.
Supply Shop resources are orientation, not prescription. The station points toward material others have found useful; how it fits is the visitor's to decide.