When OpenAI employees have a problem, they email this special address to see if Sam Altman will solve it immediately

Operating at AI speed is not easy. At OpenAI, a special process—and a magic word—helps employees instantly cut through layers of bureaucracy and clear bottlenecks slowing things down.

It’s called “friction.” And it has the power to supersede just about anything a team is doing, often carrying the force of CEO Sam Altman or President Greg Brockman with it.

The process starts when someone emails friction@openai.com to report an internal bottleneck. The issues range from a technical system that isn’t working, a process that’s not having the intended result, or office-related frustrations, such as there not being enough IT vending machines.

OpenAI’s leadership team triages the emails sent to friction@, moving forward with ones they deem worthy. To help alleviate full parking lots, for example, the company started a pilot to prioritize spots for those with long commutes. Another time, employees asked for a better process to grant API credits reliably and at scale. If the matter is considered important enough, Altman or Brockman will get involved to ensure it’s resolved.

A former OpenAI employee who spoke to Fortune praised the friction system as an effective way for leadership to get ground-level feedback. The process helps teams keep moving forward, tackling issues before they can fester, the p...