A couple of weeks ago, I posted a video on social media about the Pacific Northwest’s failure to merge lanes onto the highway. My DMs and comments became filled with strong opinions and relatable anecdotes.

“Thank you! I thought I’ve been losing my mind.”

“This is why driving here is like mario karts.”

“It seems like no one is self aware anymore.”

I grew up in New Jersey where you don’t have time to contemplate the philosophical implications of highway merging when you’re navigating the Parkway. You move fast, you merge efficiently, or you will get honked at and flipped off. It’s the rite of passage on the east coast. You are not doing “no you go, no you go” back and forth happening at 70mph. Fuhgeddaboudit, you just know what to do.

In Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest, we’ve somehow turned a simple traffic maneuver into an existential crisis by some people thinking they are being nice, while meanwhile causing backed up traffic and frustration. Others aggressively charge towards the front treating the zipper merge like a personal revenge score. Some drivers slow to a complete stop in a perfect merging lane waiting for a formal invitation to join the highway. It’s entirely preventable chaos.

It’s exactly what happens in your organization when people don’t understand or ignore how the system is supposed to work.

For anyone that is unsure of how this is actually supposed to work: The right of way belongs to the highway. The person merging needs to adjust their speed, faster or slower, to find a nice gap towards the end of the merging lane to join the flow of the highway.

The exception is when traffic is heavy and both the highway driver and the merging driver need to work together to create a zipper merge at the end of the merging lane. Not halfway down the lane, not a quarter mile before it ends. At the End.

Using the full length of both lanes maximizes capacity and minimizes the backup. When done correctly, the highway car goes, then the merging car goes, taking turns, traffic will slightly slow but it will keep moving. That’s beautiful, elegant efficiency.

Why do so many people consistently mess this up? After my video to my PNW friends, I started thinking about why this simple system breaks down so often. Some people commented on the lack of awareness, others pointed to a deeper human instinct of getting ahead even when it costs everyone time.

My operationally inclined mind landed on the system that has a loophole, and people exploit it.

Ramp signals try to fix this by metering cars one at a time, but they don’t account for the driver who gets released with a green light and then immediately goes rogue cutting across three lanes they’re auditioning for the Fast & Furious.

We can’t always prevent the rogue user, but we can design systems that account for them. We can educate, build in checkpoints, create structures that make the right behavior easier than the wrong behavior. If that doesn’t work, we can at least acknowledge that the system needs to be resilient enough to handle the potential chaos.

If you’re still with me, and you’re not just here because you also yell at merging lange failures, you might be wondering what any of this has to do with operations, leadership, or building high-performing teams. It has everything to do with it. Your organization is full of merging lanes.

Your team doesn’t follow the process you carefully designed. They’re merging halfway down the lane, creating bottlenecks, because no one explained why the process was designed that way. Or maybe they do know, but they’ve decided their way is better. Or the process doesn’t actually account for how work really gets done, so people have no choice but to go rogue.

Your new technology implementation is failing. You bought the fancy tool, rolled it out, and people are still using their previous methods. Why? Because the support structures were not built in, the learning curve wasn’t accounted for, it was assumed everyone would just figure it out and merge into the new system seamlessly.

Your cross functional projects are not running smoothly. Marketing things they have the right of way. The Product team thinks they have the right of way. No one’s zippering into collaboration, they are trying to charge to the front, and the whole initiative is full of standstill blockers while leadership wonders why nothing’s getting done.

Your newly promoted managers are drowning. They’re merging into leadership without training, without clarity of the role, without experience, without anyone telling them now to navigate the new lane they’re in. They’re making it up as they go, hoping they don’t cause a pileup.

Someone designed a system that should work for the process, the workflow, the organizational structure, but it’s breaking down because of one or more of these failures:

After 15 years of helping organization design, implement and fix their operational system, I’ve learned the following:

Good systems account for the rogue user.

They’re built with an understanding that now everyone will follow the plan perfectly. They include checkpoints, feedback loops, and enough flexibility to absorb the inevitable human chaos with collapsing entirely.

Good systems are designed with the people who have to use them.

I don’t create workflows in a vacuum, I interview the people doing the work. I observe their reality, and I ask about what’s working and what is not. The person trying to merge on the highway every single day knows things about that on-ramp that the city planner sitting in an office might never consider.

Good systems require translation.

Not everyone sees the big picture or understands how their individual actions create ripples. A good operational leader or in my friend’s words, “The Honest Operator”, can take all those different perspectives, identify the patterns, and translate them into something actionable that makes the work easier, smoother, and more strategic.

Good systems need someone who will make them happen.

Strategy is useless if it’s stuck in the junk drawer. A beautiful process map means nothing if no one implements it and takes ownership. Someone has to identify what needs to happen, how it’s going to happen, and then drive it all the way to completion and adoption. That’s where I come in.

My friends joke that I should trademark “The Honest Operator” because I am constantly looking for ways to make things more efficient. Whether it’s reorganizing the kitchen so cooking takes fewer steps, perfecting the dishwasher loading strategy for maximum capacity, or narrating merging lane failures to the people driving in the other cars when they can’t even hear a word I am saying. “Go to the end and zip! Come on, people.”

I see broken systems everywhere, and I want to help fix them. The difference in a business setting is that I am not just talking into the void, I can actually help organizations build the operational foundations, implement new technology that people will use, coach leaders through transitions, create alignment when everyone’s heading in different directions.

If you’re reading this and thinking, “Our organization is a merging lane disaster right now”, you’re in good company. Maybe your team is implementing new technology and it’s not going well, maybe you’re building a new practice and don’t know where to start, maybe your strategic plan is collecting dust because no one knows how to turn it into actual work, maybe your newly promoted managers are struggling and you need someone to coach them through it.

Or maybe you just need someone who sees systems clearly, understands human behavior, and can help design operations and leadership management that work in reality, not just in theory.

That’s my specialty. I meet you wherever you are, whether you have a clear plan and need help executing it, or you’re not sure what the plan should be yet. I listen, I ask the questions, and I guide a path forward that’s aligned, achievable, and designed for how humans work.

The best systems aren’t just efficient, they’re human centered. They account for the fact that people aren’t perfect, change is hard, and good intentions don’t automatically translate to good execution. They’re built by someone who understands that preventing organizational chaos is a lot like preventing highway disaster. You need to understand the system, design for reality, and help people see why working together creates a better outcome for everyone.

Please help me stop yelling about merging lanes, and let’s build something that actually works instead. Ready to talk about systems breaking down or leadership coaching for yourself or your organization? Let’s start with a conversation.

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