Think there’s a balance.

I work at a company where they have a documented process for everything. The thing is once some thing is in a document, it’s like some written in stone mandate that becomes unchangeable and inflexible. The stuff in the “oral tradition” remains flexible.

Every so often new blood comes along, sees how dysfunctional the documented processes are, and proposes to fix the processes. Now in principle, they are right, but those of us who have been through a few iterations dread the outcome. Invariably the changes they propose to replace stupid existing processes are instead just added to existing processes, because some folks recognize the improvement but no one wants the blame for a mistake caused by leaving the old process behind. So each time we end up with more redundant stupid work.

So while in principle, documented processes are right, sometimes the political reality is stupid.