The Bullshit-to-Value Ratio: A Simple Way to Evaluate Any Process

TL;DR: Every process can be measured with one simple metric: bullshit time divided by value time. If your ratio is above 1.0, you're spending more time managing the process than doing actual work. Here's how to calculate it, identify the worst offenders, and eliminate process theater that's killing your productivity.

Every process in your organization can be measured with one simple efficiency metric: how much bullshit does it generate versus how much value it creates? This ratio cuts through all the corporate theater and tells you exactly what you need to know about whether something deserves to exist.

Here's how to calculate it and what to do with the results.

Bullshit-to-Value Ratio = Time spent on process overhead / Time spent creating actual value

If your ratio is above 1.0, you're spending more time managing the process than doing the actual work. If it's above 2.0, you're in bureaucratic hell. If it's above 5.0, you should probably just delete the entire process and see if anyone notices.

This is the foundation of intelligent process improvement: measuring efficiency with actual data instead of guessing.

You spend four times longer planning the work than understanding the work. Most of that planning gets thrown out the window when requirements change next week anyway. This is the opposite of effective process improvement.

The valuable part is the conversation about how someone can improve. Everything else is HR theater designed to create the illusion of objectivity in inherently subjective decisions.

These meetings exist purely to make managers feel like they're managing. The information shared is either already known, irrelevant to most attendees, or could have been communicated asynchronously in one-tenth the time.

The valuable part is experienced engineers discussing technical decisions. The bullshit part is turning that discussion into a formal approval process with documentation requirements and presentation templates.

Most of the time is spent on the valuable activity: actually improving code quality and sharing knowledge. The process overhead is minimal. This is what good efficiency metrics look like.

The majority of effort goes toward the valuable activity: helping customers. The process exists to track and route problems efficiently, not to justify its own existence.

Most time is spent on the valuable decision-making. The process overhead supports better decision-making rather than replacing it.

For one week, track how much time you spend on process activities versus value-creating activities. Be brutal about categorization. If it's not directly creating value for users or the business, it's process overhead.

This is the first step in any meaningful process improvement initiative.

Value time: Writing code, talking to users, solving problems, making decisions, creating things people will use

Bullshit time: Filling out forms, attending meetings where you don't contribute, preparing status updates, justifying decisions to people who won't change them

Divide bullshit time by value time for each process. Don't round down or make excuses. If you spent 6 hours in meetings and 2 hours coding, your ratio is 3.0, not "well, some of those meetings were kind of useful."

Honest efficiency metrics require honest measurement.

These processes create value but have too much overhead. Look for ways to streamline without eliminating the core value. Maybe you need shorter meetings, simpler templates, or fewer approval steps.

This is traditional process improvement: making existing processes more efficient.

The process is mostly bureaucracy with some value trapped inside. Strip it down to the essential value-creating activities and rebuild the minimal process needed to support them.

Just stop doing it. If more than 80% of the effort is process overhead, the process is the problem. Delete it and see what breaks. Usually, nothing breaks, and you've just freed up enormous amounts of time for actual work.

This is radical process improvement: eliminating processes that shouldn't exist.

High bullshit-to-value ratios don't just waste time. They demoralize people. When smart people spend most of their day on process theater instead of meaningful work, they either leave or mentally check out.

Your best employees can smell bullshit from a mile away. They joined to build things, solve problems, and create value. Make them spend their days filling out forms and attending meetings about meetings, and they'll find somewhere else to work.

The organizations that figure this out first will have a massive competitive advantage. While their competitors are busy optimizing their sprint planning ceremonies, they'll be shipping software and solving customer problems.

What it should be: Quick coordination to remove blockers and share critical updates
What it becomes: Status theater where everyone reports what they did yesterday to people who can't help

Fix: Make it optional for anyone not actively blocked or blocking others.

What it should be: Strategic direction setting and resource allocation
What it becomes: Elaborate forecasting exercises for unknowable futures with precision that would make astrologers jealous

Fix: Plan one quarter ahead, not three. Focus on direction, not detailed predictions.

What it should be: Collaborative problem-solving and knowledge sharing
What it becomes: Approval ceremonies where people nitpick fonts and argue about button colors for systems they'll never use

Fix: Only review decisions that actually need input. Skip the presentation theater.

What it should be: Useful reference material for future decision-making
What it becomes: Comprehensive archaeological records of every decision, assumption, and meeting notes that nobody will ever read

Fix: Document decisions and their reasoning. Skip the novel-length process descriptions.

Write down every meeting, approval step, reporting requirement, and ceremonial activity your team does regularly. Include status updates, planning sessions, reviews, and administrative tasks.

For each process, honestly estimate time spent on:

Sort your list from highest ratio (most bullshit) to lowest ratio (most value). Focus your process improvement efforts on the top of the list.

For each high-ratio process, ask: "If we stopped doing this completely, what would actually break?"

Common honest answers:

Valid reasons to keep a process:

Sunk cost fallacy: "We've invested so much in this process, we can't stop now"
Visibility theater: "Leadership needs to see we're managing things properly"
Risk aversion: "What if something bad happens without this oversight?"
Meeting momentum: "It's easier to keep scheduling it than to cancel it"

When you try to eliminate high-ratio processes, expect pushback:

"But we need visibility!" Use better status updates and automated dashboards
"But we need coordination!" Use asynchronous communication and clear decision-making authority
"But we need quality control!" Build quality into the work itself, not into elaborate review processes
"But we've always done it this way!" Perfect reason to try something better

Organizations with low bullshit-to-value ratios have several advantages:

They make decisions faster because they spend less time in approval processes and coordination overhead. While competitors are scheduling meetings to discuss having meetings, they're shipping solutions.

Smart people want to do meaningful work. Low-ratio organizations attract and keep the best talent because people spend their time creating value instead of managing processes.

With less process overhead, they can change direction quickly when market conditions shift. High-ratio organizations are too invested in their processes to adapt rapidly.

Time not spent on process theater can be spent on experimentation, learning, and creative problem-solving. Innovation requires slack time that high-ratio processes eliminate.

Track how quickly value gets created vs. how long administrative overhead takes. Good processes should accelerate value creation, not slow it down.

Measure time from problem identification to solution implementation. High-ratio processes usually slow down decision-making dramatically.

Calculate value created per person involved in the process. Many processes involve too many people who add no value.

Measure how quickly processes can adapt when requirements change. Bureaucratic processes are rigid and slow to evolve.

Try this with your team: list every recurring process, calculate its bullshit-to-value ratio, and rank them from worst to best. Then ask one simple question for each high-ratio process:

"If we stopped doing this completely, what would actually break?"

Be honest about the answer. Most of the time, the answer is "nothing would break, but some manager would be upset about losing visibility." That's not a good enough reason to keep a high-ratio process alive.

Your time is finite. Your team's energy is finite. Every minute spent on process theater is a minute not spent creating value. Choose wisely.

Track time spent on processes vs. value creation. Don't try to fix anything yet. Just measure honestly.

Calculate ratios for your top 10 most time-consuming processes. Rank them by ratio and create your efficiency metrics baseline.

Start with the highest-ratio process. Stop doing it for one week. Measure what actually breaks.

If nothing essential broke, permanently eliminate the process. If something important broke, redesign it with minimal overhead.

Move to the next highest-ratio process. Continue until you've addressed all processes with ratios above 2.0.

Most organizations focus on making bad processes more efficient instead of questioning whether those processes should exist at all. This is like optimizing the speed of digging holes when you should be asking why you're digging holes in the first place.

True process improvement sometimes means having fewer processes, not better processes. The most efficient process is often no process at all.

Optimizing instead of eliminating: Making a wasteful process 10% more efficient instead of removing it entirely
Adding instead of subtracting: Creating new processes to fix problems caused by existing processes
Measuring activity instead of value: Tracking process compliance instead of business outcomes
Consulting instead of deciding: Involving more people in process decisions instead of empowering fewer people to make them

When someone proposes a new process, the default answer should be "no" unless they can prove it creates more value than overhead.

Track efficiency metrics that focus on value creation, not process compliance. Reward people for eliminating unnecessary work.

Give people authority to stop participating in high-ratio processes without requiring committee approval.

Make process elimination a positive achievement, not a sign of inadequate planning.

The most valuable process improvement you can make isn't optimizing your existing processes. It's deleting the ones that shouldn't exist in the first place.

Stop optimizing bullshit. Start eliminating it. Your team will thank you, your customers will benefit, and your competitors will wonder how you're moving so much faster than they are.

High-ratio processes are productivity cancer. Cut them out before they metastasize into organization-wide bureaucracy that kills innovation and drives away talent.

The goal isn't better processes. The goal is more value with less overhead. Sometimes that means having no process at all.