The Hollow Shell

The Creation of a Monster

When organisations rush to automate bureaucracy without asking the simple question “why does this process even exist?”, they don’t create efficiency,  they create a monster. It’s not Frankenstein’s creature, stitched together from spare parts. It’s worse: a shiny, humming machine that knows exactly what to do… but nobody remembers why we’re doing it. That’s how you end up with institutional amnesia and organisations that look impressive on the outside but are hollow at the core.

The Automation Trap: Digitising Dysfunction

AI in bureaucracy often follows a depressingly familiar recipe:

1. Spot a repetitive task.
2. Point an algorithm at it.
3. Toast to “efficiency gains.”

The Turing Institute found 143 million complex repetitive transactions a year, with 84% ripe for automation. Brilliant! Except if the process is pointless to begin with, all you’ve done is build a faster hamster wheel.

Enter “algorithmic bureaucracy”: the original flaws remain, but now they’re executed with ruthless precision and with zero human discretion to smooth out the rough edges. Congratulations, you’ve become more efficient at doing things that may never have made sense in the first place.

The Haemorrhaging of Organisational Memory

Companies love to digitise explicit knowledge (the stuff that lives in systems and SOPs). But 90% of institutional wisdom lives in people’s heads;  the tacit stuff: the “why,” the judgement calls, the “I tried that in 2013 and here’s why it blew up.” Automate without capturing that, and you’re left with processes that can hum along perfectly… right up until they don’t.

It’s like deleting your Wi-Fi password from memory because your laptop always auto-connects. One  day it doesn’t, and you’re left staring at your router wondering who you even are anymore.

The Human Cost: When Colleagues Become Casualties

Automation isn’t just a technical story; it’s a human one. Employees don’t just lose jobs, they lose people; mentors, sounding boards, Friday lunch mates. What’s left is “survivor syndrome”: guilt, anxiety, and the creeping suspicion that you’re next.

Microsoft cutting 40% of engineering roles while letting AI write 30% of code is a case in point. Efficiency, maybe. But you can’t automate the trust and camaraderie that made the rest of the team want to show up on Monday.

The Customer Experience Paradox

Here’s the bit many boardrooms miss: customers like efficiency, but they love empathy. In fact, 74% say they’re more loyal to companies with actual human help. Automation can’t smile down the phone, bend the rules when it makes sense, or sound genuinely sorry when things go wrong.

Strip out the humans, and customers won’t see a slicker business; they’ll see a soulless one. And soulless organisations are very easy to leave.

This is a real risk: the “hollowing out” of organisations. You keep the processes, the dashboards, the KPIs. You lose the culture, the memory, the messy-but-essential human glue. What remains is technically competent but utterly forgettable.

Efficiency is a commodity. Human connection is a moat. Lose that, and you’re indistinguishable from the next faceless vendor who can do the job a bit cheaper.

The Path Forward: Automation with Human Purpose

The answer isn’t “ban the bots.” It’s to use them with purpose. Kill the pointless processes before you automate them. Capture the wisdom of the humans who know why things are done before they walk out the door. And for heaven’s sake, keep some human touchpoints; for your staff and your customers.

The future belongs to “symbiotic systems”: tech that makes humans better, and humans who make tech worthwhile. The winners won’t be those who automate the most, but those who know what not to automate and can explain why with a straight face.