RSSBureaucracy, its the bane of so many people’s lives, and in most situations its totally unnecessary.
The problem is that when a new process is created, or new paperwork written, I’m sure that in most cases the people who dream up these things think they are worth having, and will help solve a given issue, or address a problem situation. It is only when multiple processes and paperwork come together that they can become overbearing and wasteful of everyone’s time and effort.
Unfortunately, once a bureacucracy is in place, its very difficult to take a step back, do a proper review and really work out which parts are helping to keep in check potential issues, and which are just in place because it seems like they always have been, and always will be!!
In the end, it all comes back to the simple question “Is this actually useful?“, the subject of a previous post. Using this question, by doing a thorough review of the processes and paperwork the key activities and processes can be kept, and the ones that do not add value stopped and removed.
This should increase productivity significantly and add real value to the organisation.
June 20, 2008 at 10:15 pm
It’s been my experience that even the most egregiously value-draining, Kafka-caricature bureaucrats *think* they’re adding value… and have gotten quite good at making it appear that they do by whatever standard happens to be in vogue at the moment.
The key questions re. ‘useful’ are “in whose eyes”, “to what purpose” and/or “by what objective measure(s)”? I.e., who gets to decide? And on what basis? E.g., Useful to sales? To risk management? To innovation? To cost control? To brand image? To employee morale? To regulatory compliance?
Just answering that, in a large organization, can kick off a bureaucratic, political process wherein everyone works very hard indeed to demonstrate the essential nature of their part of the bureaucratic machine based on interpretations of what ‘useful’ means.