Bureaucracy

Question # 1
What is the purpose?

In organizations, which operated before the development of bureaucracy,
there was little planning, order and oversight. Also, decision making was
mostly guesswork, and compensation correlated poorly with effort.
Bureaucracy changed this and turbocharged productivity growth. How?
Through its design, a bureaucracy produces
 compliance.
 discipline.
 higher precision.
 predictability.
 reliability.
 stability.
 efficiency.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3397074094
Page 46 and 149.

The goal of bureaucracy is to get humans to better
serve the organization.
Pages 46, 48 and 82.

What are you doing that is preventing you from
getting the best out of people?
https://youtu.be/9TT8NQsW_JU
Minute 47.

Question # 2
To what extent do people
make decisions themselves?

In a bureaucracy, people have no or
little voice in choosing their leaders.
Page 199.

In a bureaucracy, the organization comes before human beings.
Human beings are instruments to create products and services. The goal of
bureaucracy is to get humans to better serve the organization - thereby turning people
into semi-programmable robots.
This stands in strong contrast to humanocracy, where human beings come before the
organization. The challenge in a humanocracy is to find out what sort of organizations
help the individual human beings bring out the best they can give in various situations.
Question: How easy is it for you to launch a new initiative?
Pages 46, 48 and 82.

Frederic Taylor's goal was to put machines before humans. He wanted to make
human beings as reliable and efficient as the machines they
served. To do that, he observed and measured everything. The result: People
started following rules and punching clocks.
Taylor also divided managers and employees because he found that employees
were too stupid to select tools, devise methods, set schedules or resolve
disputes. As a result, work of employees was standardized and stripped of
judgment. It became the job of managers to enforce / control / ensure that rules
were followed and variances were minimized.
Page 63.

Bureaucracies value thinking over feeling.
Example: How well do bureaucracies understand emotions
users feel when waiting - on the phone or in a physical shop
- to talk to a customer service representative?
Page 237.

A bureaucracy has a only 1 formal hierarchy and several management layers. Why is that a problem?
 Hierarchy asks too much of too few people. Managers are expected to make decisions on all kinds of issues
– including decisions about complex issues that exceed the cognitive limits of a small group of people.
 The more people, who are below a person in a hierarchy, the more power that person has to make
decisions about any topic.
 The more important a decision is, the smaller is the number of people who can challenge the decision
maker. Power makes people less aware of risks.
 The higher a person is in the hierarchy, the more money that person earns. This is a problem as the person
at the top of the hierarchy may not be the person, who create the most value for the organization.
 As the organization grows, the number of layers in the hierarchy increases. Thereby, the cost of wages
increase.
Questions:
1. How many layers are there between the CEO and people, who work with customers?
2. To what extent do managers hold on to power when they should have shared it?
3. To what extent do people avoid disagreeing with managers?
4. To what extent are there formalized ways to challenge decision proposals?
Pages 45, 75, 85, 169, 186, 190, 198 and 313.

Question # 3
How is control achieved?

In a bureaucracy, control is achieved through
 detailed procedures and rules,
 close supervision / oversight,
 strict spending limits,
 other rules,
 little free time for people,
 little power for people to make decisions themselves,
 sanctions.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3397074094 pages 45, 82, 152 and 188.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vknDxr87rxs

Technologies reinforce top-down structures and control. 2 examples:
1. Digital technology allows jobs to be sliced into ever smaller
segments and outsourced to the lowest bidder.
2. Real time analytics make it possible to assess job performance
minute by minute - thereby making managers more control-
obsessed.
Page 80.

Bureaucracies are managed by accountants and administrators - not by builders
and inventors. What distinguishes managers from non-managers is not creativity,
foresight or technical expertise. It is the ability to develop plans, build budgets,
distribute tasks and prepare reports. Approval of new initiatives takes a long time.
Central staff groups make policy and set compliance.
Questions
1. What percentage of time do you spend on preparing reports?
2. What percentage of your time do you spend on getting approvals?
3. To what extent is the checking / controlling that is going on internally in the
organization, you work for, slowing you down?
Pages 45, 82, 152 and 188.

Questions
1. What are you doing that feels like interference or adds no value?
2. What are doing that people, you lead, could do better? In this regard,
to what extent do you invite people to shadow you for a few days to
learn what you do.
Page 317.

Question # 4
What determine how much money
people are paid for work they do?

Bureaucracy systematically undermines meritocracy, i.e. that people are free to
contribute and succeed whatever their social rank and personal connections.
Why does this happen?
1. The most confident people - not the most competent - become managers.
2. Managers have more control over employees than the reverse. When people
feel fear, they do not express contrary opinions.
3. To justify their power, managers do not crowdsource strategy.
Question
To what extent do you unfairly claim credit?
Pages 183 – 185, 315.

Managers, who are higher in the hierarchy, recruit managers who are lower in the
hierarchy. Everyone competes and fights with each other to get promoted to jobs that
are higher in the hierarchy, include more decision making authority and higher wages.
How competent and creative people are matter less in order to
get promoted.
Question
To what extent do you discount the contributions to other people to get promoted?
Pages 45, 75, 83, 86 and 313.

Bureaucracies pay managers based on
 the size of the budget they are responsible for,
 how many people are below them in the hierarchy.
Managers assess people's performance and give people feedback
about how well they perform.
Pages 45, 190 and 313.

Question # 5
To what extent do people
try out ideas?

6 out of 10 frontline employees, who work for large companies, find it very
difficult to try out ideas. Bureaucracies are designed to produce
reliable products – not prototypes. Deviations from standard practice are to
be eliminated – not celebrated. To stop experimenting is to stop growing.
Question
1. To what extent do you do everything you can to play it safe and avoid
making mistakes?
2. To what extent do you avoid challenging rules that do not make sense?
Pages 250 and 313.

A bureaucracy is intrinsically conservative and defends the status quo long
past the time the quo has lost its status. Funding decisions are often made relative to
last year's budget - promoting more of the same. Being a wall against disorder, a
bureaucracy systematically devalues originality and discourages rebellious thinking.
Ideas people have are met with indifference, skepticism or resistance.
Question
How do you react to ideas people share?
Pages 70, 75, 82, 85, 133 and 170.

Strategies and budgets are set by people, who are positioned at the top of the top of the
organizational hierarchy. Managers tell people, who are lower in the hierarchy, what jobs they
should do. Jobs are precisely defined to strengthen specialization and
thereby increase efficiency. People become really good at doing narrowly defined
tasks. By precisely describing roles and responsibilities, people know exactly what they are
responsible and not responsible for. Power is placed in jobs / positions that people hold. People
know exactly what decisions they can make and not make. And people know exactly what
resources they control and do not control. By increasing specialization, people think less
creatively and take fewer initiatives.
Question
To what extent do people, who are closest to customers, design their own work, solve
problems and test new ideas?
Pages 45 and 61.

Question # 6
How openly do people
share information?

A bureaucracy is a closed system. 3 examples:
1. It prefers secrecy over openness / transparency.
2. It prefers having work done by monopolies within the organization such as
HR, planning, procurement, manufacturing, marketing, finance / funding, IT
and legal affairs.
3. It resists having work done by external people / companies.
Question
To what extent do you favor your department even when that is not optimal for
the organization?
Pages 131, 177 and 315.

Question # 7
How can you replace
bureaucracy with humanocracy?

1 hour walk and talk with another person
Part 1: 30 minutes.
 What is blocking people, who work for this organization, to give their best?
 Why is this blocking people?
Part 2: 10 minutes.
Which anti bureaucratic values – ownership, markets, meritocracy, openness, community or
experimentation - would be most helpful value to solve the problem defined in part 1?
Part 3: 20 minutes.
What is one simple idea you want to try out which can help apply values you chose in part 2?
Example: Use social media and other publishing platforms to openly share work you do.
Inspired by
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3397074094 pages 327 and 343.

Bureaucracy

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