Starting with "good intentions" is heartwarming and represents beautiful words that show care for the team. However, "amateur-like actions" based solely on good intentions can sometimes lead to unintended confusion and accidents.

This article focuses on problems caused by "good will-based assumptions" and explores key considerations through real examples and the background of cultural changes at Google.

1. The Risk of "Actions Without Confirmation" Driven by Good Intentions

Assuming "this is fine" or "this would be better" and taking action without consulting stakeholders—this is typical of good will-based amateur behavior.

Even with pure intentions, such actions:

• Ignore decision-making processes
• Overlook overall balance and impact scope
• Neglect confirmation with downstream processes or other departments

This ultimately leads to major confusion through communication errors and system failures. A single action that skips confirmation can shake the reliability of an entire project.

2. Real Example: "Good Intentions" to Improve Website Appearance Lead to Accident

A developer enthusiastically wanting to "make the appearance more stylish" independently modified source code (CSS and templates). This resulted in unexpected impacts, breaking the checkout screen and causing large-scale revenue loss.

Cases where such "well-intentioned" modifications cause serious impacts on both internal operations and customers are far from uncommon.

Note: In the Shopify ecosystem, checkout control areas are intentionally limited to certain scopes, creating a structure that can avoid such impacts.

In the IT world, when making changes, we typically use impact analysis and regression testing to understand the scope of influence and confirm that no problems will occur. However, in environments where people have:

• Only experienced solo freelance development, or
• Conversely, only handled small parts within massive organizations

The concept of "change management" itself may not be required and therefore never developed. In such cases, there are missing perspectives needed for maintaining consistency while seeing the big picture, which can be evaluated as amateurish in professional settings.

3. "Permission-less Action Culture" Sometimes Carries Greater Risk Than Upside

In Silicon Valley, the culture of "Don't ask for permission" is sometimes promoted, but in reality, not everything works out well. Rather, in larger organizations, the "costs" of such culture often become more prominent.

For example, Google's TGIF (the regular town hall from the startup days) was originally a symbol of free questioning and development culture. However, as the company scaled, concerns about leaks and confidentiality increased, leading CEO Sundar Pichai to scale back this culture, reducing frequency and strictly limiting content. （ref）

This doesn't deny "freedom to act" itself, but represents a turning point that demonstrates how freedom lacking confirmation and structure can harbor risks.

4. How to Design a Balanced Challenge Culture

Of course, this doesn't mean denying the challenger spirit or hacker mentality. Rather, challenges are the source of growth. However, I'd like to pose one question here:

"Is the desire to immediately implement improvement ideas without going through processes really 'improvement'? Or is it simply 'doing what you want to do'?"

This question provides a perspective for repositioning individual actions within the organization:

• Does going through processes contribute to the entire team?
• Or does it end in self-satisfaction?

Correctly identifying this watershed is the attitude required of professionals. On the other hand, if challenge costs are excessively accumulated, there's also the risk of dampening members' motivation to take on challenges. This could create a passive attitude like "This looks good to do, but convincing people and impact assessment seem troublesome, so let's just leave it as is..."

Therefore, managers need the balance to establish necessary guardrails while not overly suppressing the spirit of challenge.

Conclusion

Good intentions are a beautiful starting line.

However, assumptions without confirmation and disregard for processes bring confusion to organizations.

Challenges accompanied by confirmation and communication are what provide sustainable value to both individuals and organizations.