From Workarounds to Improvement: Turning Local Fixes into Organisational Learning
It started, as many good insights do, with an audit.
Earlier this month, we were reviewing a client’s laboratory data system. The study team had mentioned a few “quirks” in their LIMS — nothing serious, just small things that made daily work a little slower. But as the audit progressed, a pattern emerged: every operator seemed to have their own version of how to get the job done.
One analyst had developed a macro to speed up calculations. Another preferred exporting data to Excel because “the formulae are more reliable.” A third had renamed folders to make them easier to find. Each fix made sense in isolation — they were intelligent, practical responses to small irritations.
But together, they painted a familiar picture: a system being shaped from the ground up by local fixes, undocumented shortcuts, and tacit know-how.
When we traced the root cause, it turned out the embedded Excel module in their LIMS occasionally failed to save first time. The local workaround — operating offline and re-uploading files manually — was efficient, safe, and well-intentioned. But no one outside that department knew about it. The risk wasn’t the workaround itself; it was the silence around it.
The Hidden Cost of Quiet Fixes
Every organisation has these invisible adjustments — the extra spreadsheet, the verbal agreement, the forgotten post-it on a monitor that says “don’t click this.”
Workarounds are rarely acts of rebellion. They’re signs of commitment. People use them because they care about getting the job done and keeping the science moving. But when they remain hidden, they start to accumulate like sediment. Each one shifts the riverbed of the process a little further away from its intended path.
Over time, this creates two parallel realities:
The documented system, clean and idealised.
The lived system, messy but functional.
When the gap between the two grows wide enough, risk creeps in — not because of bad intent, but because the organisation no longer has a single, shared understanding of how the work is done.
And that’s where QA should step in, not with a red pen, but with curiosity.
Reframing the Role of QA
One of the most valuable things an internal audit can do is uncover these quiet adaptations — not to correct them immediately, but to understand what they reveal. Each workaround is a small story about friction: where the system design, documentation, or training no longer fully fits reality.
This is where rethinking QA matters. Quality isn’t about enforcing process uniformity; it’s about helping systems evolve safely.
At Headway, we often describe QA as the organisation’s collective memory. Our role is to capture learning — not just deviations and CAPAs, but also the creative, everyday problem-solving that staff use to make systems work. When those insights are captured and shared, the organisation becomes smarter. When they aren’t, it stays reactive.
From Fix to Framework
So how do you turn a workaround into organisational learning?
It doesn’t require a new form or committee. It starts with visibility. A simple, accessible mechanism — even a shared log or online form — where staff can record issues and fixes in plain language.
For example:
Issue: LIMS embedded Excel occasionally fails to save.
Impact: Data loss risk.
Workaround: Operators now complete Excel offline and upload manually.
Next step: Investigate system patch; update SOP if necessary.
Once captured, these small entries can be reviewed periodically by the system owner or QA. Patterns soon emerge — repeated pain points, clever improvements, recurring training gaps.
This approach does three things simultaneously:
Protects the organisation by making hidden risks visible.
Empowers staff by showing that their practical insights are valued.
Improves the system by converting operational wisdom into design feedback.
It’s continuous improvement at its most human scale.
Culture Eats Procedure
Perhaps the most striking observation from this client’s case wasn’t the workaround itself — it was how easily it could have remained hidden. The team hadn’t told QA because they didn’t think it was worth reporting. “It’s just how we do it now,” one said.
That sentence deserves attention.
“It’s just how we do it now” is often where the biggest risks live. Not because people are careless, but because normalisation creeps in quietly. Once a workaround becomes “the way we do things,” it escapes visibility.
To counter this, organisations need a culture where small process deviations aren’t seen as failures but as opportunities for learning. When people can safely share what isn’t working, QA can focus less on inspection and more on interpretation.
Learning Loops, Not Blame Loops
At the RQA Conference next week, this will likely be a major theme — how QA can act as a connector rather than a critic.
Imagine if every time someone created a workaround, it triggered a short learning loop:
Describe what changed.
Discuss what drove it.
Decide if it’s an improvement, a risk, or both.
That loop turns hidden fixes into structured feedback. Over time, it builds a shared narrative of how your systems actually evolve — one that regulators, sponsors, and staff alike can trust.
What We’ve Learned
Since that audit, our client has introduced a shared Improvement Log. It’s simple, transparent, and already paying off. During a recent cross-department review, a separate team identified the same LIMS issue before it caused data loss.
That’s organisational learning in action — and it started with a single workaround.
Action Box: Try This in Your Team
Start a “What’s Working, What’s Not” board. Digital or physical — doesn’t matter. Invite anonymous contributions.
Review quarterly. Identify trends: recurring issues, clever solutions, and improvement ideas worth formalising.
Celebrate openly. Share one “smart fix” in every team meeting. Visibility changes behaviour faster than policy.
Closing Reflection
Workarounds are inevitable in complex systems. But when captured and shared, they stop being cracks in the foundation and start becoming the blueprint for evolution.
The smartest organisations don’t fear deviation — they learn from it.
So next time someone says, “It’s just how we do it now,” take that as your cue. There’s probably a better way waiting to be discovered.
