Our company brought in a senior executive, and to demonstrate management ability, implemented an extremely strict reimbursement policy.

Even for buying a pack of ten-yuan printing paper, it must go through seven approval processes and get signatures from five managers.
The senior executive thought this could prevent extravagance and save the company money.
As a result, an old employee in the administrative department stopped doing any work every day.
He split what originally required a one-time purchase of office supplies into buying a pen or a folder each day.
Every day, he would hold dozens of ten-yuan invoices and queue outside the offices of five managers to get signatures.
The managers were overwhelmed by these trivial invoices every day, with no time even for meetings.
After three months, the company lost two million-dollar major clients due to extremely low efficiency.
And that old employee was not only not fired but also received the “Compliance Model Worker” award for “strictly following financial regulations” that month.