The Path of Least Resistance
How natural forces shape systems. Why friction compounds. And what carving canyons teaches us about organizational change.
There's a reason canyons exist.
Not because of a single catastrophic event. Not because someone designed them. But because of something far more powerful: the relentless movement of a natural force following the path of least resistance.
Drop by drop, year after year, the Colorado River carved through solid rock to create the Grand Canyon. Not through force. Through persistence. Through finding the easiest path and following it, over and over, until even stone gave way.
Your organization works the same way.
In nature, forces don't fight resistance - they find the path around it.
Rivers don't try to flow uphill. They find the lowest point and move there. When they encounter rock, they don't stop - they probe for cracks, for weak points, for any gap that allows movement. Over time, that gap becomes a channel. That channel becomes a canyon.
The same principle applies to human systems.
Your team doesn't wake up trying to create bad habits. But when there's friction in the official process, they route around it. When communication channels are clogged, they create back channels. When decisions are slow, they stop asking for permission.
Behavior flows like gravity toward the path of least resistance.
The question isn't whether this happens. It's whether you've designed the paths intentionally, or if they're forming by accident.
Let's start with the positive case: when flow is channeled properly, it creates life.
Rivers carve valleys that become fertile plains. They distribute nutrients. They create ecosystems. Entire civilizations formed along riverbanks not because rivers were convenient, but because consistent, predictable flow enables growth.
In your organization, good flow looks like this:
- Information moves to where it's needed without someone manually routing it
- Decisions happen at the right level without escalating unnecessarily
- Processes are documented, so new people can ramp up quickly
- Feedback loops are short, so problems surface before they compound
- People know what they own, so they don't wait for permission
When these channels exist, work flows naturally. People aren't exhausted from pushing against resistance. They're energized because momentum is on their side.
Example:
A design studio documents their client onboarding process in a single shared doc. Every step is clear. Every handoff is explicit. New team members reference it. Clients know what to expect. The process runs itself.
This is intentional flow. It took effort to create, but now it sustains itself. Like an irrigation canal that, once dug, delivers nourishment season after season.
But here's the other side: unchecked, undirected flow can destroy.
Floods erode soil. They undermine foundations. They carve paths that destabilize entire landscapes. Not because the force is inherently malicious, but because when flow has no channel, it goes everywhere - and erodes everything.
In organizations, destructive flow looks like this:
- Information spreads through gossip instead of official channels
- Decisions get made in side conversations, leaving others out of the loop
- Work bypasses the documented process because "it's faster this way"
- Firefighting becomes normal because problems aren't caught early
- People do whatever feels easiest in the moment, creating chaos downstream
This happens because humans, like all natural forces, will find the path of least resistance whether you design one or not.
If your official process is slow and bureaucratic, people will route around it. If your communication channels are cluttered, they'll create unofficial ones. If decisions require five approvals, they'll stop asking and just do it.
And here's the danger: these informal paths work in the short term. They relieve immediate friction. But over time, they erode the structure you built. They create silos. They make knowledge transfer impossible. They turn your organization into a maze only veterans can navigate.
Example:
A growing agency has an approval process that takes three days. So the team starts using a "quick Slack approval" shortcut. It works great - until someone approves the wrong thing. Then another. Then a client gets the wrong deliverable.
The workaround carved a new path. But that path had no guardrails. No documentation. No way to audit what happened. The short-term relief created long-term chaos.
Canyons aren't carved by floods. They're carved by millennia of consistent flow.
The same is true for organizational change. One big training session won't fix culture. One all-hands meeting won't clarify strategy. One process overhaul won't eliminate friction.
But small, consistent changes, repeated over time, reshape everything.
Here's what this looks like in practice:
Weekly Rituals Over Annual Offsites
You don't need a quarterly planning retreat to build alignment. You need a 30-minute weekly check-in where priorities are clear and blockers are surfaced.
Do this for six months and watch how much smoother execution becomes. Not because you had one big moment of clarity, but because you created a reliable channel for information flow.
Incremental Documentation Over Big Knowledge Bases
You don't need a 200-page operations manual. You need one person to spend 20 minutes after each client project documenting "here's what worked, here's what didn't."
Do this for a year and you'll have a living knowledge base that actually gets used. Not because you built it perfectly upfront, but because you let it form naturally, shaped by real use.
Continuous Small Improvements Over Radical Overhauls
You don't need to "blow everything up and start over." That's tempting, but it usually creates more chaos than it solves.
Instead: identify the one process that's most broken. Fix that. Give it four weeks to settle. Then fix the next one.
This is how the Grand Canyon was formed. Not in a day. Not through violence. Through relentless, patient, directional movement.
The mistake most leaders make is trying to force behavior uphill.
"People should follow the process." "They should communicate in the official channel." "They should escalate issues instead of solving them themselves."
All of this is true. And all of it fights human nature.
A better approach: Design channels that align with the path of least resistance.
If people aren't using your project management tool, maybe it's too complicated. Can you simplify it? Or accept that Slack + a shared doc works better for your team?
If decisions are slow because they require five approvals, maybe that's the problem. Can you clarify decision rights so people know what they own?
If information spreads through hallway conversations instead of official updates, maybe your update format is too formal. Can you make it a 3-bullet asynchronous Slack post instead of a meeting?
You don't fight gravity. You build aqueducts.
Ancient civilizations understood this. They didn't try to make rivers flow uphill. They designed channels that worked with natural forces. Those channels lasted centuries.
When you look at your organization, ask yourself:
1. Where is the current going?
Not where your org chart says it should go. Not where your documented process says it should go.
Where is it actually going?
- Where do decisions really get made? (In meetings? In Slack DMs? In parking lot conversations?)
- Where does information really live? (In people's heads? In Notion? In scattered Google Docs?)
- What workarounds has your team created because the official way is too slow?
These informal paths aren't defiance. They're the current finding its way. And they'll tell you where your official channels have too much friction.
2. Are you channeling it, or is it eroding you?
If the current is flowing through documented, intentional channels - great. That's life-giving flow. It nourishes your organization. It enables growth.
But if the current is carving its own unpredictable paths - creating silos, informal hierarchies, undocumented processes - that's erosion. It might feel like momentum, but it's destabilizing your foundation.
The fix isn't to dam the flow. It's to design better channels.
Your business is a living system. Forces are already moving through it. Information. Decisions. Culture. Energy.
Those forces will find the path of least resistance whether you design one or not.
The question is: are you building irrigation systems or watching floods?
Are you creating clear channels that sustain growth, or letting unmanaged flow erode what you've built?
The Grand Canyon took 17 million years to form. Your organizational culture can shift in six months - if you understand the forces at work and direct them intentionally.
Small, consistent, directional movement. That's how rock becomes canyon.
That's how chaos becomes flow.
You don't need to redesign your entire organization this week.
Pick one force that's currently eroding instead of nourishing:
- Decision-making that happens in back channels instead of documented forums
- Information trapped in people's heads instead of shared systems
- Work bypassing your process because it's faster to just "wing it"
Build one intentional channel for that force. Make it the path of least resistance. Then watch how quickly the current shifts to follow it.
That's not theory. That's physics. And physics always wins.
Ready to Build Better Channels?
We'll map where the current actually flows in your business, identify where it's eroding vs. nourishing, and design intentional channels that work with human nature instead of against it.