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I am a very organized individual – as a freelancer I have to be. But I have yet to meet any organization where I don't feel they are an unorganized mess. Natura

by atoav 4y ago

I am a very organized individual – as a freelancer I have to be. But I have yet to meet any organization where I don't feel they are an unorganized mess. Naturally communications get more complicated when there are more people, sure. But I also worked on film sets where teams of people who got to know each other a week ago work with military discipline towards a common goal, with a clear team structure and efficient communications. So: individuals can be well organized. Small teams can be well organized. But what about bigger structures? I think in bigger organizations organization increasingly becomes an issue of aligning the incentives of all people involved. If you are the spreadsheet person in such a corporation and your higher ups have you incentiviced to cover your ass and follow a fixed and unchanging bureaucratic process, you will not want to adjust to changing requirements. If the make up artist on a film set treated what should be a short brush up between two pictures the same as this, the whole production would grind to a halt, because everybody waits for the make up artist. The issue with the spreadsheet person is that their higher ups typically also care more about the numbers than the actual thing/project being done. If getting the numbers, reports, sheets whatever becomes more important than doing the actual thing in a good way, your organization is in trouble. That does not mean those numbers, reports, sheets are not important. But they serve a function for the project, they are not the goal of the project. If they are thegoal of the project, you are doing it wrong.

Aeolun 4y ago
This sounds very similar to the thing where people start caring more about the organisation than the goals of the organisation, and inevitably end up in power without caring one whit about those goals.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  The clue is right there - they don't care about the org, they care about their own personal power and status within the org. Not least because that often translates directly to earnings. But also not exclusively. Because for some people the point of work isn't to do a good job, it's to be superior to others. I'm increasingly convinced bureaucracy is a power flex. Making it difficult/impossible for some people to do their jobs is a way of keeping them in their place. They're not a threat while they're tied up in frustration. But it's also a way of confirming the status of those who removed their personal agency. It's similar to cost structures. It would be insane to consider the engine room of a military vessel as a cost centre, because it literally makes it possible for the vessel to do its job. But ops are considered a cost centre because "ops doesn't generate a profit." Of course it generates it profit. In fact it generates most of the profit. Remove ops and most of the profit disappears. But it also usually has low political status. Getting labelled a "cost centre" is a way to force the rest of the power structure to think of it like that.
  - vkou 4y ago
    > I'm increasingly convinced bureaucracy is a power flex. Making it difficult/impossible for some people to do their jobs is a way of keeping them in their place. They're not a threat while they're tied up in frustration. There's a few sociopaths who create some fraction of bureaucracy with that purpose, but it doesn't sufficiently explain the sheer volumes of it. The more plausible explanation, to me, is that people create bureaucracy for two reasons: 1. To protect the firm from bad outcomes. Someone, at some point, screwed up, and burnt the firm, or allowed an external third party to burn the firm, and bureaucracy developed as institutional scar tissue to protect against this happening again. 2. To protect their jobs. If they aren't involved in something important, there's no reason for the firm to employ them. If they can wedge themselves into a business-critical workflow, they can increase their importance to the firm, without actually having to do anything useful.
- Loughla 4y ago
  Does that thing have a name? I am speaking to a group of executives at a local institution about this specifically at their organization next week, and can't come up with a snappy name for that.
ghaff 4y ago
>But I also worked on film sets where teams of people who got to know each other a week ago work with military discipline towards a common goal, with a clear team structure and efficient communications. Of course, there's no shortage of horror stories about film shoots. But, in general, you've got well defined responsibilities. There's been a huge amount of planning before people get together to shoot. It's very time bounded. It is very military in a lot of ways and quite different from how a company operates in general.

by atoav 4y ago

Aeolun 4y ago

This sounds very similar to the thing where people start caring more about the organisation than the goals of the organisation, and inevitably end up in power without caring one whit about those goals.

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
The clue is right there - they don't care about the org, they care about their own personal power and status within the org. Not least because that often translates directly to earnings. But also not exclusively. Because for some people the point of work isn't to do a good job, it's to be superior to others. I'm increasingly convinced bureaucracy is a power flex. Making it difficult/impossible for some people to do their jobs is a way of keeping them in their place. They're not a threat while they're tied up in frustration. But it's also a way of confirming the status of those who removed their personal agency. It's similar to cost structures. It would be insane to consider the engine room of a military vessel as a cost centre, because it literally makes it possible for the vessel to do its job. But ops are considered a cost centre because "ops doesn't generate a profit." Of course it generates it profit. In fact it generates most of the profit. Remove ops and most of the profit disappears. But it also usually has low political status. Getting labelled a "cost centre" is a way to force the rest of the power structure to think of it like that.
- vkou 4y ago
  > I'm increasingly convinced bureaucracy is a power flex. Making it difficult/impossible for some people to do their jobs is a way of keeping them in their place. They're not a threat while they're tied up in frustration. There's a few sociopaths who create some fraction of bureaucracy with that purpose, but it doesn't sufficiently explain the sheer volumes of it. The more plausible explanation, to me, is that people create bureaucracy for two reasons: 1. To protect the firm from bad outcomes. Someone, at some point, screwed up, and burnt the firm, or allowed an external third party to burn the firm, and bureaucracy developed as institutional scar tissue to protect against this happening again. 2. To protect their jobs. If they aren't involved in something important, there's no reason for the firm to employ them. If they can wedge themselves into a business-critical workflow, they can increase their importance to the firm, without actually having to do anything useful.
Loughla 4y ago
Does that thing have a name? I am speaking to a group of executives at a local institution about this specifically at their organization next week, and can't come up with a snappy name for that.

ghaff 4y ago

>But I also worked on film sets where teams of people who got to know each other a week ago work with military discipline towards a common goal, with a clear team structure and efficient communications. Of course, there's no shortage of horror stories about film shoots. But, in general, you've got well defined responsibilities. There's been a huge amount of planning before people get together to shoot. It's very time bounded. It is very military in a lot of ways and quite different from how a company operates in general.