I came across the phrase “vicious cycle of edits.” I was curious, so I asked a Large Language Model AI (which is how the AI prefers to be identified). Here are its responses to my questions, unedited except for minor, non-material formatting changes to ensure readability:

A.     What concisely does the Vicious Cycle of Edits consist of?

The vicious cycle of edits consists of five distinct, recurring phases that turn a simple draft into a never-ending workflow loop:

1)      The Sharp Draft: A lower-level employee writes a clear, direct, and factual document.

2)      The Style Stampede: Middle managers rewrite it purely to match their personal, subjective reading styles.

3)      The Executive Pivot: A director changes the entire tone to guess what their boss wants to hear.

4)      The Risk Cleansing: Panicked reviewers strip out bold conclusions and replace them with vague, safe jargon.

5)      The Memory Wipe: The final boss rejects the safe jargon for being "too vague" and orders a rewrite—forcing the author to start all over again. The document is sent all the way back to the bottom of the chain to be rewritten, often looking exactly like the original draft from Phase 1. The cycle starts completely over.

B.     Is the vicious cycle of edits true and is it common in government?

Yes, the "vicious cycle of edits" is real and it is incredibly common in government.

In public administration, this refers to a systemic workflow bottleneck where a document such as policy brief, briefing note, or press release—is endlessly revised, re-worded, and passed up and down the chain of command without ever reaching final approval.

Why It Is highly common in government? Government cultures are uniquely prone to this phenomenon due to three distinct structural realities:

  • Extreme Risk Aversion: Bureaucrats are sensitive to political fallouts. A single poorly phrased word can trigger a media crisis or a parliamentary inquiry. Fear drives endless tweaking.
  • The Bureaucratic Vicious Circle: Sociological frameworks, such as Michel Crozier's bureaucratic model, demonstrate that when a dysfunction occurs in government, the instinct is to create new rules, reviewers, and approval steps. This multiplies the number of editors, worsening the cycle.
  • Lack of Clear Autonomy: In the private sector, a manager often has the final authority to publish. In government, authority is highly centralized at the top, meaning middle managers edit documents to anticipate what their boss wants, rather than what is objectively best.

The Consequences

  • Analysis Paralysis: Critical public policies or public communications are severely delayed, sometimes taking months to clear up a process that should take days.
  • Watered-Down Content: By the time everyone has injected their edits to minimize risk, the final document is often stripped of its original utility, sharp insights, or clear messaging.
  • Staff Burnout: Original authors (often lower-level analysts) experience deep frustration and fatalism as they watch their expert work get mangled by non-experts higher up the chain.

How to Break the Cycle

To stop the loop, public sector organizations generally have to implement strict "rules of engagement" for document drafting:

  • Implement "Two-Pass" Caps: Limit a document to a maximum of two rounds of revisions before it must be either approved or discussed in a live meeting.
  • Distinguish Style from Substance: Implement strict managerial rules that edits can only be made if the content is factually inaccurate or politically high-risk—never simply because "I would have phrased it differently."
  • Asynchronous Signoffs: Move from a vertical conveyor belt of edits to a single shared document where stakeholders edit simultaneously, forcing them to negotiate conflicting changes in real time.

C.    How common is “incredibly common”: all the time, 90 percent, etc.?

While exact statistical surveys on this specific phrase are rare, veteran public servants and public administration studies estimate that the "vicious cycle of edits" occurs in 70% to 90% of non-routine documents in centralized government environments.

To understand what "incredibly common" means in practice, it helps to break it down by the type of document and the level of government:

·       95% of the time (Virtually Always): For high-profile items like Ministerial briefing notes, Question Period cards, press releases, cabinet submissions, and public-facing policy announcements. These files touch political staff and senior executives, making them magnets for endless editing loops.

·       70% of the time (The Standard Experience): For internal strategic documents, program design options, and inter-departmental memos. These require cross-branch signoffs, which inherently trigger the cycle across different silos.

·       10% of the time (Rarely): For routine operational files, standard data reports, and highly technical or scientific documents where executives lack the specialized knowledge to offer stylistic edits.

D.    What should employees do: live with it?

No, employees should not simply "live with it." While one cannot single-handedly change a government's bureaucratic architecture, accepting the cycle passively leads straight to severe burnout, apathy, and cynicism.

Navigating this reality requires adopting a mix of tactical drafting skills, psychological boundary-setting, and process-management strategies.

1.      Tactical Drafting Strategies

Staff can structure their writing to minimize the surface area available for executive edits:

  • Use the "Sacrificial Lamb" technique: Include one slightly imperfect word or non-essential sentence in an early draft. Editors looking to "leave their stamp" will focus on fixing that obvious element, leaving your core analysis untouched.
  • Front-load the logic: Put your conclusions and critical data in bold bullet points at the very top. Executives rarely have time to rewrite bullet data; they usually focus their stylistic edits on long, narrative paragraphs.
  • Hyperlink your sources: If a manager challenges a phrasing or a conclusion, having a direct link to an approved source (like a previous legislation piece or a Minister's public speech) stops the edit cycle immediately by proving the wording is already "gospel."

2. Process Control Strategies

Control the workflow so the document cannot enter a perpetual loop:

  • Enforce a version control table: Add a strict table to the top of the draft tracking version numbers, who edited it, and why.
  • Pick up the phone: When a document hits a three-way editing impasse between different managers, set up a 15-minute live meeting or call. Force them to settle their stylistic differences in real-time rather than passing a track-changes file back and forth for weeks.
  • Provide an "Agreed-To" summary: When sending a revision up the chain, write: "Attached is V3, which incorporates Director X’s feedback on tone and Manager Y’s updated statistics." This signals to the next reviewer that the text is already a negotiated settlement.

3. Psychological Defenses (Detachment)

To survive in government long-term, you must separate your personal worth from the text on the page:

  • Adopt the "Ghostwriter" mindset: Remind yourself that you do not own the document; the Office of the Deputy Minister or the Minister owns it. Your job is simply to provide raw materials. Once it leaves your desk, what they do to it is their political risk, not yours.
  • Accept "Good Enough": Do not spend three days crafting a perfectly poetic policy sentence. Write clean, clear, standard bureaucratic prose. The less emotionally attached you are to the rhythm of your sentences, the less it hurts when a director clumsily rewrites them.
  • Track your victories elsewhere: Look for professional fulfillment in aspects of the job you can control, such as building stakeholder relationships, mastering data analysis, or mentoring junior staff.

Disclaimer: This transcript is shared for educational purposes regarding organizational design and workflow efficiency. It does not represent the policies or viewpoints of any specific person, group, or government agency.

LLM AIs rely heavily on the Law of Large Number to get to the average as their best approximation of the “truth” based on the data they are trained on and fed. The saying garbage in, garbage out(GIGO) applies.

Thus, while the above assessments and assertions of the AI seem to make sense, it might not be true, especially now and the future. We can actually assess the AI’s assertion that vicious edits are incredibly common in government by sharing your experience and validating or debunking it.

What are your thoughts? Are the AI’s assessments and assertions accurate? If so,  how complex organizations can better optimize their approval workflows? Let me hear from you through your comments below.

Make sure to share your own thoughts with the author by leaving a comment below