Creating a Bureaucracy to Curse
The structures we live with today resulted from thousands of people before us seeking personal and organizational meaning and productivity. Our organizations were created by people as well intentioned and smart as ourselves, then we stepped into their creations. Whether we work for the schools, the military, a company, or a social agency, we stepped into quite similar structures based on related assumptions. Do some research at the next party you attend: Tell your favorite story about the bureaucracy's corrosive influence on important work. Will the people listening argue against the possibility of this happening? No. Will they wander off to seek more interesting conversation? No. They will stay because they know what you are talking about from their own experiences—and they want to tell you their favorite stories. Similar patterns of criticism occur in party after party, organization after organization, century after century. How might this centuries-old human pattern make sense? Why might we create organizations and then criticize our creations? We have repeated these patterns for generations; what can we learn from this?
We have a mental disconnect between our creation of bureaucracy and our use of it. We act as if we have nothing to do with the existence of the structures we love to curse, when in fact we assist in building them. This chapter is about four human predilections and their unintended consequences. People seek:
achievement.
predictability.
stature.
complexity.
Healthy individual actions lead to unhealthy organizations; understandable personal preferences lead to unfortunate organizational dynamics. It is our own daily choices that put us in our organizational dilemmas. Let's look at these four ways (among many) that we help tie our own hands.
Achievement
Huge, ineffective organizations have grown up over the centuries as a natural outgrowth of talented, invested people working together to do a good job. People do not set out to create these monsters, it just ends up that way. Actually, they set out to create work with meaning and direction. Then they get narrow and deep and bureaucratic because they are doing a good job and trying to do it better.
Years ago, C. Northcote Parkinson popularized attacks on bureaucracy with his little book, Parkinson's Law. The fact that he pointed out our foibles fifty years ago hasn't reduced our willingness to repeat history. He pointed to the British Navy after World War II, with twice the staff and half the fleet it had after World War I. But you and I don't have to look to the British Navy to find similar examples. Though it is convenient to single out staff functions guilty of this, the tendency to grow without regard for organizational limits has more to do with human nature than with some genetic defect peculiar to staff professionals.
We look for things to do that we can control. Having control over our work allows us to repeat it, to improve upon it, and to gain satisfaction from it. The control, the boundaries we establish, give us confidence about what is ours and allow us to predict that we will be able to do this again. We want to make a difference; we want to be important. Our need for significance is expressed through our work: When our work is important; we are important! Yes, it is a bit more complicated than that, but you get the idea.
And here comes the organization part, the building-the-bureaucratic-beast part:
When I have important work in the organization, that work deserves the recognition and support and resources of the organization. I need more information, people, equipment, and money to bring this work to fruition.
Or, I am attracted to those parts of the organization that have important work to do because I want to help; I want the significance that comes from being part of important work. So I gravitate in that direction.
Or, my team has important work, which makes me important because they work for me. So I want their work to get recognition because that means I'm getting recognition: I'm important too!
Or, I have routine work, but I don't have important work. So I will organize and routinize the work that I have. I will analyze and refine it; I will learn how to do it in the most time-efficient manner. This will help me and may be seen as significant by others.
Or, I have my work, important or not, but it is mine. In order to do it well, without interference from others, I establish the boundaries of my work. And within the boundaries, I organize it the way I want it, making the outcomes more predictable to me.
Each alternative offers the possibility of accomplishment and significance, valued by myself and/or others. And each of these alternatives supports the growth of structure, initially within my job, then around my job, then within my job in relation to others, and so on until I have a bona fide organization. Allow that organization to function for a few months or years and it will settle into itself, locking in roles and relationships, systems and structures. What started out as searching, flexible, individual intentions turns into a concrete organizational structure.
No, it doesn't always work out that way, and yes, there are other elements not considered. But the larger point holds: We create the organizations we now curse, we do it out of understandable needs, and we don't know what we are creating as we are creating it. Our focus on what we are doing and what we want diverts us from the long-run implications of our acts. Work that passionately involves us is most seductive when we "know" the need to institutionalize our purpose and products.
Predictability
Much of what is written about organizations deals with order and control; it seems that's what organizations are for. Recent theories and models proclaim that if you use them, you will have more predictable success. That's appealing to organizations and individuals surrounded by uncertainty and buffeted by the marketplace. We all want to know how to repeat what we have done well before. In our search for security and certitude, we refine the structure of our work; we eliminate discovery, flow, and flexibility in favor of knowing. Freezing people and their actions in place becomes our way of knowing ahead of time what will happen. As their results become more predictable, they are often less productive.
The models, theories, and experts imply more predictability than they can deliver. The world often appears to have no order at all. Or if it does have an order, we cannot grasp it. In my experience, successful leaders respect the unpredictability of the world. Many of them delight in it. Leaders are not as linear and logical, as clear and coherent, as textbooks suggest. The same is true for other successful, happy people. Ask them why their lives work; their answers will vary. They are not paper cutouts of this or that life theory; they don't usually hold up a ten-step model and proclaim it as life.
Successful, happy people (and organizations) usually have a larger guidance in their lives, beyond any methodology or model. They reflect regularly on their meaning, intention, and purpose. They pay less attention to the roadmap and more attention to the needle of their compass. They are drawn toward their magnetic north, and they adjust to the terrain whether the map says there is a road there or not. None of this fits with order, control, and predictability. Yes, there is a place for structure, but it is at the boundary, not at the heart of fulfillment. Helping people point toward their own magnetic north is not as easy as installing a process or a model, asking everyone to learn and use it, and putting in some controls to make sure it's happening. Bureaucracy imposes order from the outside in, seeking performance that can only come from the inside out. There are no procedural substitutes for a person committed to a purpose.
The traditional organizational world aspires collectively to a perfection that we have never been able to realize individually. The organization wants to know that there will be no errors—and wants to know three months before the event. Predictability is prized. The organization depends on structure and process to eliminate doubt and the unforeseeable. We all participate in this as we try to show our knowledge and our power—and protect our jobs. In a pivotal organization meeting, you seldom hear someone exclaim, "That caught me completely by surprise!" In a bureaucracy, such a statement would be called "career-limiting." Surprises are visits (often gifts) from the world that exists outside of our plans.
Organizations help us resolve our life dilemmas. They put upon charts and into procedures the choices we are struggling with individually; they help us decide the answers—or they decide for us. They are biased in the direction of predictability so we will all know where we stand at the moment… and, for the purpose of coordination, where we will stand next. The question, "What shall I do next?" looks completely different to a middle manager in a large company and to a single mom at home with two kids. Their frameworks for answering the question, and the help they receive in answering the question, are completely different. What defines the difference is bureaucracy: The single mom creates her own order within her little organization—and without much help. The manager works within an organization that has previously considered what's needed and put structures in place to provide it. The home is filled with life, spontaneity, and chaos, while the office is filled with procedures, quiet, and order.
The security of knowing what is next is why many of us work in large organizations. We are there because of the regular work, the dependable resources, the interesting people, the fringe benefits, and the paychecks. We like being able to count on all of that. In return, we agree to do predictable things. We show up regularly and on time (in casual clothes on Friday); we do our work and follow the rules. We honor the culture, the rules, the roles of the organization. For many of us, this works for years and years, for a career. Others find this predictability stifling. We are torn between freedom/spontaneity and control/predictability. That part of us that opts for the predictable supports the growth of bureaucracy
Stature
Bureaucracy comes with hierarchy, and hierarchy tells us who is important—and not important—around here. Many of us who want to be important rely on hierarchy to confer stature upon us. In the military, rank and importance are displayed on sleeves, shoulders, or hats. In most of our organizations, the display is more subtle. It is who has the bigger desk, bigger cubicle, bigger plant, bigger budget, or bigger staff. Hierarchy is put in place to clarify responsibility and decision making, but has consequences going far beyond these controlling intentions.
Ego needs stature and hierarchy offers just that—or promises to with each move up a level. Hierarchy's consequences are myriad, and some are destructive. Those of us who would like to see ourselves as better than others are drawn to hierarchical ladders. When we are trying to win in the hierarchy game, we are inclined to focus more on what will elevate us and less on what's best for the larger organization. More levels and more people give us more opportunities in the hierarchy. All of this inclines those of us who are status seekers toward more bureaucracy.
If you were attending an important meeting, how would you react to being asked each of these questions: "What might you contribute?" "What level are you?"
The contribution question focuses on task, suggests working together, and implies that we are going to get something done and we hope you can be a part of it. It implies the need to learn; it is an honest inquiry and encourages more inquiry. The question about level says your importance is determined by where you are in the structure. It implies that you will receive attention appropriate to your level, not to what you bring. It leads to more and higher levels and functions. As we elevate ourselves, we complicate the organization.
Complexity
The fourth reason for creating organizations we love to curse complicates the first three. We simply do not recognize the impact of adding an individual, a level, or a function to an organization. We proceed in some innocence (because of many of the reasons cited earlier) taking small steps now that have profound implications later. Consider what happens to an organization of one as it expands to become six.
The simplest human organization is one individual. One person working by herself on a task:
possesses all the skills available and knows who must do the job.
processes information within herself; her thoughts and feelings do not need to be discussed in a meeting before being acted upon.
decides intuitively without lengthy rationalizing and verbalizing.
receives and integrates received information in her own way; she does not have to gain the agreement of others on how she will process information.
Work contained within one person is simple by comparison to our other options. This is not to argue that all work ought to be done by isolated individuals, but just to recognize the simplicity of this smallest, totally integrated organization. We seldom consider what is happening when we take the next step of moving beyond a person to a pair or a team. The initiating individual seldom says, "Actions like I'm about to take, create the bureaucracy I love to hate."
Move from a person to a pair of workers and complexity has increased greatly. Get beyond a pair to four, five, six people on a work team and there is a geometric increase in the complexity of working together. Yes, there are increases in the brain, muscle, or heart power available. Certainly, it can be worth the complicating consequences of adding workers, but recognize the simplicity of an individual working alone and the costs of more people working together. We seldom think of those costs when we are creating the organization. In a work team of six, each has a relationship with the other five; that's thirty relationships right there! Add the relationships between that team and others, complicating matters further. Maintaining those relationships requires telephone calls, meetings, memos, and e-mails; energy is expended, lost, and consumed, moving information, decisions, feelings, and tasks through a field of relationships. A department throws off a huge amount of heat and friction as people work across their roles, functions, and hierarchies. That energy burned is not available for other important work with customers, suppliers, other departments, or even family at home. Consider the many interactions, boundaries, partitions, and patterns around you. How much heat is generated internal to your group or function—energy not available for other uses?
People motivated to do good work that they can control will compound their own structure—very fertile ground for bureaucracy. As in…
"We really could do this work better if we learned and everybody used this new software."
"Georgia's work in human resources has been expanding. She wants to learn more about compensations systems. How about adding a generalist so she can focus more on compensation?"
"According to our survey, a lot of people want this quarterly report on a monthly basis. That will take more time and staff, but the customer is asking for it."
These are not expressions of people trying to make work more complicated. These are the honest expressions of motivated individuals trying to help—and creating bureaucracy in the process. In discussions over coffee, they will wonder about how this place got so big and complicated, seeing no relationship to their own actions.
These interactions multiply to create organizations of some size. Corporations and agencies and governments are expanding to dimensions previously unknown. Members are more physically distant from the core purposes of the organization yet still a part of its purposes. Individuals are measured by quantified standards imposed from a distance. In the absence of a clear, compelling corporate purpose, people define their own. They "make up" the reasons they and their department exist. They talk about it among themselves. They create their own purpose, and boxes, the beginnings of their own little bureaucracy.
Your Choice
The four areas explored in this chapter—achievement, predictability, stature, and complexity—offer some explanation of why we create bureaucracy. Whatever the reasons, we create these bureaucracies over and over again, and we then criticize what we have created over and over again on some almost eternal wheel. We keep proclaiming this doesn't make sense—and we keep doing it! This forces me to a different conclusion: Bureaucracy makes sense in ways we do not fully understand. The four reasons for bureaucracy in this chapter are an attempt to say, "Yes, this makes sense!" Let's honor our experience rather than dismiss it. Let's affirm the bureaucracy we keep creating, not because we love it and want to enmesh ourselves in it, but because we cannot ignore the truth of our experience. Only then can we choose what we will do about organizations.
We can resist them at every turn and do war with them.
We can ignore them, hoping to disempower them by not giving them attention.
We can attempt to understand them, to shape them into better servants of society.
We can give up on them, despairing of the possibility of their doing anything constructive.
We can create other choices.
There is also a cynical voice that deserves attention. We do not have to look or listen long before someone tells us how bad life is in this company or this church or this school or this city. People seem anxious to lament the hopelessness. At coffee breaks, co-workers elaborate on the unworkability of the system. Political leaders proclaim their disappointment in what's happening in Washington and try to bring us into their camp. Movies and television and comic strips draw cynical laughter from us in caricatures of organizations and executives. We, the hopeless people within organizations, then use all of this experience to reinforce ducking down, pulling back, and giving up. We even celebrate the failure of the organizations we work for; we congratulate ourselves on knowing better than to stick out our necks; we do what we can to fulfill our prophecy of organizational doom. The cynic sucks the breath out of organizations.
I have done much of this. Years ago, I met with four friends after work to have a beer and talk about the company we all worked for. This was an especially enlivened and competitive session: Five guys making fun of their bosses and other executives in the corporation. We were having a great time one-upping each other and generally demonstrating our superior knowledge about how this company ought to work—all at the expense of the leadership. Just before getting up to go home, and in a rare moment of authenticity, I said, "Hey, next time you guys get together to gripe at and make fun of the management, give me a call! This has been fun! On the other hand, if you want to get people together who are willing to do something constructive, count me out: I just gripe, I don't act." And I left.
Enough. I am tired of it. Tired of it in myself and in others. Tired of defining myself as a victim, as clever but weak, as incisive but inconsequential. That just does not fit with who I want to be; it does not fit with how I want to do my work, live my life interacting with organizations. Tired of lifting a half-empty glass to "… screwed-up organizations and all of us poor bastards suffering under them." Tired of toasting others' failures and weakness while celebrating my own superior knowledge and distance. Speaking the truth about myself to my four friends brought it home to me. I was at last aware of my complicity in bringing organizations down. When I realized that truth more deeply, I quit my patterned griping and looked for more opportunities to take part in helping organizations succeed. I began to breathe life into, rather than suck life out of, organizations.
Coming to Terms With Bureaucracy
In our search for conspirators working to entrap us in this bureaucracy, we shine our lights on… a huge mirror. We discover that we are busily creating these organizations that we then rail against. We pursue achievement, predictability, stature, and complexity for ourselves with little thought to our impact on the future of the organization. What we conceive has consequences far beyond what we intended. We are the parents of this beast— and the children of it. It reflects no better purpose than what we bring; it offers no more hope than we hold; it inspires no better life than we give.
Come to terms. Come to terms with what you love and hate about these bureaucratic creatures. Come to terms with what they give to you and take from you. Consider the deal you've made with these devils and angels in your life. You have been defining the deal for years; now, step back and see your patterns. Honestly, what have you been doing? Use this model to help in that consideration:
First a few words about this model as it might apply outside organizations. With an old friend in mind, recall those elements of your friendship that fit with the phases of this model. Recall your initial awareness of the person. Remember getting to know more about him or her. Think about reaching some deeper understanding of who that person is. Remember moments when you felt full acceptance of your friend—your friend's thoughts, feelings, life choices. Think about times when you appreciated that person for who he or she was—his or her uniqueness. Recall times when you felt especially loving toward your friend. These six phases are expressed much more distinctly in this model than they exist in real life; I'm oversimplifying your friendship to help you see six aspects of it.
Let's apply those same six phases to your developing relationship with an organization. With one organization in mind—perhaps your employer or a client—answer these questions, using the six-phase model as your starting point:
Describe your relationship with this organization as it has developed so far, beginning with awareness and moving toward love.
Select and explain two phases that best represent the relationship now.
What encourages you most about the relationship to this point?
What do you struggle with most in deepening your relationship with this organization?
What might the future hold for this relationship?
Who are the key people that your relationship focuses upon within the organization?
What could you do with those key people to help them look at the relationship with you?
These questions and their answers carry you further along the path with this organization and the people in it. Your ease, or disease, with it affects everything that happens. If you are angry or not accepting of the organization, that will show through. If you are dependent, that determines your reactions. If you have a deep appreciation, that colors all you do. Wherever you are in the six phases, whatever your stance toward this organization, has consequences. Step back, look, and see what you are creating.
Simply said, the key to embracing the beast of bureaucracy is the higher three phases of this model: acceptance, appreciation, and love. Most of us do much better on the three lower phases: becoming aware, knowledgeable, and understanding. We often create gaps at just the point we should be closing them; we step back at the point we should step forward. We worry that fully embracing the current organization requires continuing in that same mode. Not true—no more than you have to take up all the characteristics and habits of a dear friend. In fact, you can detest some of the actions your friend has taken and also embrace the friend for the effort he or she has made. The same is true for organizations.
We finish Part One, having explored the good reasons bureaucracy comes into being and our likely complicity in all of that. We also have a better understanding of how our stance toward organizations—our loving or hating—affects all that we do within them. Together, we are the life of our organizations: As we breathe, so they breathe. What we choose, they become.
