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Why front-office workarounds undermine corporate and investment bank performance
Modern corporate and investment banks are tangled in a paradox: transformation programs are everywhere, yet real efficiency gains remain elusive. This paper explains why.
When formal decision-making slows or loses credibility, informal systems take over. Shadow functions emerge. Governance becomes performance theater. Workarounds multiply, not out of malice, but necessity. The result is a detour economy: costly, duplicative and invisible to the very programs designed to fix it.
This is not a story about process flaws. It’s about ambiguous decision rights, complex governance and a culture that rewards caution over clarity. Cost structures harden. Shadow organizations grow. Change programs stall. Leadership sees activity but not progress.
What’s inside
- A taxonomy of shadow functions - and the operational drag they create in risk, tech, data and project execution.
- An expose on governance drag - where minor decisions are escalated, over consulted or buried in committee loops.
- A breakdown of COO model archetypes - with a call to treat execution support as a dynamic operating system, not a binary choice.
- A cultural diagnosis - revealing how risk aversion, interpretive ambiguity and parochial interests institutionalize inefficiency.
- A 90-day field guide for executive action - with pragmatic moves to expose shadow work, simplify governance, rewire incentives and reset the tempo of execution.
Why it matters
Front-office inefficiency is no longer just an operations problem: it’s a strategic liability. Poor governance, ambiguous decision rights and a tolerance for informal workarounds lead to hidden cost centers, unmanaged risk and execution drag across the investment bank front office - creating so called “sticky costs.” For COOs, solving this challenge goes well beyond process; the goal is to restore clarity, discipline and confidence in the operating model. Until leaders confront the informal economy inside their own organizations, efficiency programs will keep missing the mark.
This paper is a blueprint for executives looking to lead from the ground through visible simplification, structural courage and a radical reset of how work gets done.
Explore the full report
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