Driver 3 · Friction
Friction: where work slows before anyone notices
Friction is the silent tax on execution. It rarely shows up in dashboards, but you feel it everywhere: delays, rework, unclear process, tool drag, and decisions that bounce around without landing. Driver 3 reveals where momentum is leaking long before performance drops.
Friction isn’t noise — it’s the system telling you something
Teams often treat friction as randomness. “Just a tough week”, “tools acting up”, “people are busy”. Rhythm OS treats friction differently: friction is patterned. It appears in consistent places because the system is shaped that way.
How friction behaves inside a team
There are five common forms:
- Process drag — steps that exist for no clear reason.
- Decision friction — decisions that loop or stall.
- Tool friction — systems that add work instead of removing it.
- Coordination friction — unclear handoffs and repeated clarifications.
- Parallel work friction — multiple streams colliding for attention.
None of these problems are dramatic individually — but together they drain momentum week after week.
Where friction actually comes from
The root causes usually sit upstream:
- Old constraints that no longer fit new priorities.
- Overlapping ownership — unclear who drives the outcome.
- Tools chosen for reporting rather than flow.
- Leadership uncertainty pushing decisions back into teams.
When friction rises, it’s a sign the operating system has not caught up with reality yet.
Simple diagnostic: the “two-week drag test”
Ask a team these three questions:
- What should have moved by now, but hasn’t?
- Where did the delay actually come from?
- Is it a one-off, or a repeating pattern?
Patterns — not exceptions — reveal the real friction.
Resetting Friction inside a 30-day cycle
When Friction becomes the main driver for a Reset, the intervention is small but powerful:
- Remove one recurring blocker that slows everyone down.
- Create a stable weekly decision surface so decisions land once.
- Fix one broken handoff between teams.
- Reduce tool-switching by tightening where work lives.
The principle is simple: remove what slows the team the most — not what annoys them the most.
Signals that friction is decreasing
You’ll see it in how work moves:
- Decisions settle faster.
- Work moves in larger, cleaner chunks.
- Fewer “who owns this?” moments.
- Dependencies stop surprising teams mid-week.
- Weekly resets feel lighter.
Friction is not the enemy — it is information. When leaders clear friction deliberately, momentum returns quickly, often faster than teams expect.