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Yes, that's because managers are the quintessential bureaucratic worker, and bureaucracy is an antithesis to productivity. Unfortunately though, some amount of
by Rury 4y ago
Yes, that's because managers are the quintessential bureaucratic worker, and bureaucracy is an antithesis to productivity. Unfortunately though, some amount of bureaucracy is inevitably needed to sustain an organization.
- meltyness 4y agoI agree with your sentiment but argue that rather than harming productivity, bureaucracy harms autonomy. This can cut both ways. On one hand, having a clear cut process is often a boon.
- lumost 4y agoI suspect that this is the nature of org evolution. Any project has a certain probability of success/failure. When a failure means exit/promotion pause... then continuing to deliver projects is just rolling the dice. Eventually the smart people in an organization wise up and move to less measurable parts like management. It doesn't make sense to disallow this - as you smart/successful people moved into the bureaucracy and keep the training wheels on. On the other hand, it can get out of hand - particularly when hiring in a bureaucracy from the outside world.
- namaria 4y agoI find this view interesting if you think the origin of the concept (of bureaucracy) illustrates the transition from arbitrary management towards a rule-based, rational (and very much productivity enhancing) approach...
- quickthrower2 4y agoGreat for work that is amenable to strict process. Getting burgers out in 3 minutes for example.
- namaria 4y agoAlso great when you want national resources managed by policy and not by cronyism. I get the modern trope that bureaucracy = bad, the whole point I'm trying to make is: the concept was first proposed as an idea of improvement in administration in the 1800s.
- pixl97 4y agoOne half of people think that bureaucracy is bad because it's in the way of the work they are trying to get done. The other half think it's bad because they can't steal everything that's not nailed down.
- pishpash 4y agoAnd sometimes stealing everything that's not nailed down is the way work gets done, i.e. disruption. Trying to manage this out based on some anodyne rules out of a committee makes for a perfectly harmonious but completely static, risk-averse organization of little potential. It's like trying to censor speech. You get rid of "bad" speech but you also get no interesting speech. Is it really worth it?
- bawolff 4y agoMost things have a golden middle amount, where its great in the right amount but sucks if you have too much or too little. Bureaucracy is no exception. Trying to make a large group of people work towards a common goal effectively is really hard without some management. Too much though is extremely stifling.
- Rury 4y agoThe thing is, it's needed. You can't have an organization without some level of bureaucracy. It's what ensures an organization, works and remains to be a functional organization. But it's very nature is anti productive. By this I mean: documenting, discussing, approving, and creating boundaries, all work to slow down an organization, even though it's necessary to ensure the wellbeing of the organization. As a specific example, organizations often have separation of duties for certain things (like activities involving payment to prevent embezzlement from happening), but doing so naturally slows down the handling of these activities. If one person has to do his part, then write documentation to instruct what they're trying to do and what they need someone else to do, send those instructions to someone else, wait for their approval, and then send it to someone else to process it... all of this is slower than if the person who wrote the instructions, skipped writing the instructions, and approved and processed it themselves. But obviously that can result in some bad situations, and hence why some bureaucracy is inevitably necessary.
- ajmurmann 4y agoA lot of things that we categorize as bureaucracy were created as a reaction to something bad happening. Someone shipped the product with an obvious security flaw -> every new product needs security review; some product had a name that violated someone else's trademark -> making committee gets created; someone kept expensing insane meals -> let's create clear expense guidelines; managers keep approving things that violated the expense policy -> let's higher auditors who review every expense report. This will keep happening to even the most incompetent person cannot do anymore harm. Meanwhile top performers leave. AFAIK the best way out of this has been Netflix's "freedom and responsibility". You expense crazy meals, you get a warning. You do it again, you are fired.
- lll-o-lll 4y agoTell me more about this Netflix “freedom and responsibility”. The natural trend towards inefficient “process for all the things” hits hard as a really deep insight. Security for example. Every new things needs security review. How does this fit into the Netflix “freedom and responsibility” concept?
- naasking 4y ago> bureaucracy were created as a reaction to something bad happening Probably, but not every bad thing happening requires a response. Sometimes mistakes or bad things happen, and you just say, "use better sense next time", and then you move on.
- 4y ago