Bureaucracy

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Gary Hamel on busting bureaucracy for good
...on, their creativity. So we have a long way to go and I'm under no illusions of how difficult this is because as a social system, a social structure, bureaucracy is one of the most ubiquitous and deeply entrenched systems - there's a rather powerful coalition around it and so I think it's going to take a lot m...more
...aying that despite all of this interest in flatter organisations, actually many large organisations still have layers of management and you have this Bureaucracy Mass Index. Can you say a little bit about what that is and what the cost of bureaucracy is? Gary Hamel: Well, I just got very curious because everyo...more
...anisations still have layers of management and you have this Bureaucracy Mass Index. Can you say a little bit about what that is and what the cost of bureaucracy is? Gary Hamel: Well, I just got very curious because everyone complains about bureaucracy. Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has said...more
...u say a little bit about what that is and what the cost of bureaucracy is? Gary Hamel: Well, I just got very curious because everyone complains about bureaucracy. Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has said it's a disease. Charlie Munger, who's the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, has said it...more
... have to do is admit what it costs. So we've developed some measures at the level of an economy. We figured that across the OECD, the cost of excess bureaucracy is somewhere around $9 trillion a year in lost economic output and I think we have some pretty good thinking underneath that. But with respect to an ...more
...hinking underneath that. But with respect to an individual organisation, it is hard to beat something that you can't measure. So some of the costs of bureaucracy are obvious: you can see multiple layers in an organisation that kind of shows up on the P&L, like too many bureaucrats. But a lot of the costs, the ...more
...ticking that goes on in organisations - which is an enormous waste of energy - those things are not so visible. So we created this little thing, the Bureaucracy Mass Index. It's really a way of at least beginning to build a baseline and say, 'well, how much of this is there in my organisation', with a hope th...more
...clear is the path between here and there. Because you look at some of these vanguard organisations that are managing very few layers with very little bureaucracy and many of those models are built over a decade, or two or three or four. And so you see the endpoint in what's been a long migration but aren't sur...more
...hat the intermediate stages are for you. So we for sure have been working on that problem. I think the hardest one though is that any alternative to bureaucracy requires a pretty radical redefinition and redistribution of power. And if you spend your entire life playing this massive multiplayer game we call b...more
...y requires a pretty radical redefinition and redistribution of power. And if you spend your entire life playing this massive multiplayer game we call bureaucracy and learning how to accumulate and use bureaucratic power, and then one day someone says to you, well, now we're going to change the game. Well, that...more
...ith a couple of things that I think are required, and then I'll talk about the solution. First of all, I would argue that if the goal is to uninstall bureaucracy or move to a post-bureaucratic organisation, this is going to be a complex, multistage redesign. Bureaucracy (at least as practiced in a modern compa...more
...d argue that if the goal is to uninstall bureaucracy or move to a post-bureaucratic organisation, this is going to be a complex, multistage redesign. Bureaucracy (at least as practiced in a modern company), emerged over quite a considerable time - probably 50 or 60 years from the late 19th century into the mid...more
... whatever the process, it has to be emergent. It has to in some sense be bottom up - you have to create a coalition of the willing. Thirdly, because bureaucracy works after a fashion, whatever you do you have to be careful that you don't blow up what is there. So you have to have something that is revolutiona...more
...ntation, that's the same way we have to change - evolve the measurement. I don't think it's an one kind of armageddon, massive battle to the death of bureaucracy. It's saying, right, we know there are different ways to do things. Let's try them, let's do them in a safe way, and the ones that work will propagat...more
...this kind of bureaucratic industrial model that we've all been conditioned into? Both if we're employees, and if we're managers? Yes. I think just as bureaucracy in a way undermines our organisations - it infects them with maladies that make them inertial and incremental - I also think it doesn't make us very ...more
...dies that make them inertial and incremental - I also think it doesn't make us very good human beings. The game that you have to play to get ahead in bureaucracy - I mean yes, part of it is competence. Good people do get ahead. But it also values a lot of skills that a lot of us are not that proud of every day...more
...rt of it is competence. Good people do get ahead. But it also values a lot of skills that a lot of us are not that proud of every day. You know, in a bureaucracy there's often a zero-sum competition for promotion. So it's quite easy - almost mindlessly - to just suddenly undermine a rival and not be very suppo...more
... just suddenly undermine a rival and not be very supportive. Because at the end of the day, one of you is going to get promoted and not the other. In bureaucracy, because budgets tend to be fairly inflexible, and it's a kind of a ritualistic process once a year, there's a temptation to shade the truth or argue...more
...nd bring people together to do something new? How do you get really good at connecting people and building a network? How do you get good at clearing bureaucracy out of people's way? And so there's a whole new set of skills that are pretty much under under taught and under practiced. So yes, there's a lot of u...more
...up in life? Because it's always very easy to blame somebody else for where you ended up. So I think there's something similar and just like we have a Bureaucracy Mass Index that we use to measure bureaucracy in an organisation, we have kind of a little tool - am I a bureaucrat? Where you can start to ask yours...more
...lame somebody else for where you ended up. So I think there's something similar and just like we have a Bureaucracy Mass Index that we use to measure bureaucracy in an organisation, we have kind of a little tool - am I a bureaucrat? Where you can start to ask yourself, is there something I've done in the last ...more

Bill Fischer and Simone Cicero on Haier and the entrepreneurial organisation

...ng by not doing and managing by not managing. And instead you look into the traditional work ethic as it is in the West which has created the western bureaucracy, which is very much a structure of control. There is a radical difference. And another difference — I think it’s really important to spot — is the p...more
...that. **What do you think Simone? S Cicero: Well, I think technology at Haier is being used to destroy the organisation not to not really to destroy bureaucracy only. I think Haier has been already accepting the idea that again, it’s a no bullshit culture — so they are really destroying the bureaucracy. They...more
...stroy bureaucracy only. I think Haier has been already accepting the idea that again, it’s a no bullshit culture — so they are really destroying the bureaucracy. They’re really on track to take bureaucracy out of the picture. To take out bullshit, pointless micromanagement. So, when you speak with Zhang Ruim...more
...en already accepting the idea that again, it’s a no bullshit culture — so they are really destroying the bureaucracy. They’re really on track to take bureaucracy out of the picture. To take out bullshit, pointless micromanagement. So, when you speak with Zhang Ruimin, he will tell you maybe companies or organ...more
...of organisations that the people who really thrive are people who are either young and don’t have much experience of a traditional kind of management bureaucracy, or they’ve come from some other context, which is so different that they’re not kind of porting over any of those learned habits. But for those who ...more
...y become fascinated by the idea of actually doing that. Better to have one or two people in a micro-enterprise than have one or two people in a small bureaucracy. So we’ve been in conversations with three or four different groups about starting from the beginning and saying, “Look I have an organisation, we ha...more
...id of bureaucracies, to get rid of all this bullshit work, as David Graeber, the British anthropologist wrote. And also it’s really about taking over bureaucracy in a serious way, not just about speaking about removing bureaucracy. But it’s also about acknowledging that bureaucracy -needs to be eliminated in a...more
...raeber, the British anthropologist wrote. And also it’s really about taking over bureaucracy in a serious way, not just about speaking about removing bureaucracy. But it’s also about acknowledging that bureaucracy -needs to be eliminated in an age of an increase in technology, zero transaction costs. You know,...more
...t’s really about taking over bureaucracy in a serious way, not just about speaking about removing bureaucracy. But it’s also about acknowledging that bureaucracy -needs to be eliminated in an age of an increase in technology, zero transaction costs. You know, it’s no more the industrial age — we are beyond tha...more

Aaron Dignan on being complexity conscious and people positive

... Aaron Dignan: I think the core concept is really just that the way we work is fairly broken for both us as individuals and us collectively. And that bureaucracy has become something that's a little bit out of control, and really quite dehumanising, and quite immobilising. And it doesn't have to be that way. T...more
...t what we ended up doing is just going and looking at, and talking to all these organisations that do work differently, that have sort of given up on bureaucracy, and tried alternative approaches - and just ask them, what's different about them and how they work. And when they tell us the answers, the practice...more
... a computer. Don't put a $15,000 security system in place and make everybody badge in and badge out and lock the computers to the desks. The cost and bureaucracy will be far greater than the cost savings that you incur. And there's an example in the book from Favi, in France, where the CEO came in to find tha...more
...nvites more practice and better practice. And I think we see this happening even in our own company. I mean, you start with a bar where there is bad bureaucracy, and work in an environment that's filled with misogyny and bullshit. But then, even when you elevate to a completely different level, the new consci...more
...opping. So instead of starting by adding some new practice or some newfangled policy, or some new people or whatever, what can you take away? Most of bureaucracy is actually things that are in the way, structures, roles, rules that are in the way. There are things that are holding you back that you could get ...more

Pasteur Byabeza on transitioning to self-management at Davis College

...culum were the norm. So decision making and access to information were a privilege of only a handful of individuals at the top. So there was too much bureaucracy which resulted in disempowerment, lack of trust and frustration. So people at the bottom seemed to only work for a paycheck. There was no job satisfa...more
...ry employee. There's more transparency, more accountability, more freedom to think differently. Things are rapidly processed because there is no more bureaucracy. Anyone can make important decisions - youcan launch new initiatives, you can hold colleagues accountable, you can even help resolve conflicts. Every...more

Jos de Blok on Buurtzorg and the virtues of humanising, not protocolising

... care authority are making plans which are not really based on a vision and on content. So it's really a system thing, which can also create a lot of bureaucracy again, but it feels like we are a collective and that feels very good - that we are aligned, that we like each other. I think we love each other. Peo...more

Nand Kishore Chaudhary from Jaipur Rugs on love, collective consciousness and self-management

...ays that out of three big companies in the world, two companies will be closed down or will be merged with other companies. So the research says that bureaucracy is the biggest problem and the only companies that will survive are those who will go towards self-management. So this is proved by the research....more

Lisa Gill and Mark Eddleston celebrate 50 episodes of Leadermorphosis

... doing things works - this industrial paradigm, like you said: the engagement stats, productivity stats, you know. Gary Hamel talks about the cost of bureaucracy; it's not working anyway, so it's like, what have you got to lose? It's worth trying something, isn't it? Do a pilot, experiment with something. I th...more

Amy Edmondson on psychological safety and the future of work

...LG: Exactly. I think Gary Hamel is really good at highlighting the cost of bureaucracy and if someone brought out the tried and tested model of pyramidal, hierarchical organisations today, with all the data of how costly and slow, peopl...more

Margaret Wheatley on leadership and Warriors for the Human Spirit

...DNA, hierarchy is in our DNA. Not necessarily the people's DNA, but the the progress of a civilization always leads to increased hierarchy, increased bureaucracy, and then power going more and more into fewer and fewer hands. And then periods of destruction follow that. And fundamentalists arise. And fundament...more