Being A Bureaucrat
I remember studying in school about Max Weber and his thoughts on "bureaucracy" and "bureaucratic organizations". If I recall correctly, Weber argued that it is in the very nature of bureaucracies to grow larger and become more inefficient. Weber's theories would give rise to the belief that as a bureaucrat you need not aspire to greatness, as "good enough for government work."
After doing a bit of research I found that according to Weber, the bureaucratic form has six major principles. Namely,
1. A formal hierarchical structure
Each level controls the level below and is controlled by the level above. A formal hierarchy is the basis of central planning and centralized decision making. This is similar to the chain-of-command model upon which military organizations are traditionally built.
2. Management by rules
Controlling by rules allows decisions made at high levels to be executed consistently by all lower levels. This is the classic cookie-cutter approach to management. Every peg must fit into a round hole, even if the peg is square!
3. Organization by functional specialty
Work is to be done by specialists, and people are organized into units based on the type of work they do or skills they have. Every person has a job and everyone will do their job. God forbid someone try to something outside the box of their job -- moving outside the box shakes up the entire status quo and steps on everyone who has grown secure within the limitations of their box.
4. Purposely impersonal
The idea is to treat all employees equally and customers equally, and not be influenced by individual differences. In order to be fair, it is mistakenly enshrined that everyone must be treated the same. If different people are treated differently, then it is agrued that they were not being treated fairly. In the ideal bureaucracy, to be equal you must be treated equally rather then being treated equitably.
5. Employment based on technical qualifications
To get the job you must fit the job description. In the ideal bureaucracy it does not matter what your attitude is or what diversity you present, you must have the checklist complete before you move ahead.
6. The Bureaucracy Grows Bigger
Theorist C. Northcote Parkinson demonstrated that the management and professional staff tends to grow at predictable rates, almost without regard to what the line organization is doing. He established the so-called Parkinson's Law - the bureacracy will grow largers.
Are Bureaucracies Ugly??
People in bureaucratic organizations generally blame the ugly side effects of bureaucracy on management, or the founders, or the owners, without awareness that the real cause is organizing based on the
bureaucratic form. It is bureaucratic to think that all functions of planning and control have to be done by management. Transformational leadership is not created.
It is bureaucratic to think that managers and managing are more important than the people who achieve the quality or satisfy individual customers. It is bureaucratic to think that the higher you are on the organization chart, the more important you are.
It seems to be a basic precept of bureaucracy that ambiguity is intolerable and must be resolved. Things must be black or white. There is no room for gray. That is why rules exist and must be applied in a cookie-cutter approach to all.
Ideally though, to achieve total quality or to consistently dazzle customers, your organization and your people must have some tolerance for ambiguity. You have to deal in the real world, facing real problems and real people. In the real world, there is a lot of gray. If you attempt to make things black or white, you miss too much. Rules can be unambiguous, while guidelines are ambiguous, e.g., "If the guidelines don’t work to achieve the mission, then forget the guidelines and do what it takes achieve the mission." That’s pretty gray.
The most widely held, and perhaps the most damaging, belief underlying bureaucracy is the belief that consistency, itself, has value.
Consistency is very important in piece parts that make up a product. And, in the absence of good reason for changing, consistency has value in relationships. But, consistency in choices or decisions can sometimes be a barrier to good quality, or to satisfying customers. For those striving for quality or customer satisfaction, it is valuable to believe that consistency is nice and comfortable as long as it achieves the desired quality or results in satisfied customers. But, the moment that it gets in the way of quality or customer satisfaction, forget consistency and substitute flexibility.
A sister to the idea of consistency is the idea that equal treatment for everybody is fair for all. All you can say about equal treatment for all is that it will result in unequal satisfaction for all. Bureaucracies value the process of equal treatment, but ignore the outcome of unequal satisfaction.
If you strive for an objective outcome, like quality in your product, or customer satisfaction from your service, then examine the idea that equal treatment for all is good. I suggest to you that equal satisfaction for all customers is a better strategy than equal treatment for all customers.
How do you want to be measured–by the treatment you give or by the outcome you achieve? Customers are only interested in getting satisfied. If equal treatment doesn’t satisfy them, then they expect you to treat them unequally. If you are legally or morally wedded to the conclusion that unequal treatment is unjust, then pay attention to the idea of choices. Giving the customer lots of choices makes it possible to provide as many different treatments as customers tell you they need in order to be satisfied.
One example is the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles, the people who provide drivers’ licenses. Until recently, they treated everybody the same. To get a license, you went to the office and stood in line. They didn’t give appointments. By treating everybody the same, they made some people really dissatisfied.
Then, they began offering appointments. If time is important to the customer, the customer can call up for an appointment. If time isn’t that important, or you need something today, you can come anytime and wait in line. By offering a choice, they increased the number of citizens who are satisfied with their service.
Another false belief that is common in bureaucracies is the idea of the "slippery slope": "If I do it for one, I have to do it for everybody."
This is an argument that pops up almost automatically in bureaucratic thinking, and is another sister to the belief in consistency and equal treatment for all. This idea is so pervasive because there are some situations in which it is true. The error is in over-generalizing the idea and applying it where it is patently false and sometimes even foolish.
Organizations that value total quality or customer focus want their people to make decisions and choices based on the mission outcome and not on the process. So, the process becomes much more flexible, as long as it is aimed at achieving the desired outcome. If you have to wrap the product in green to satisfy this customer, you wrap it in green. If you have to deliver the paper to the third floor for this customer, you deliver it to the third floor. You trust that people are reasonable and understanding, and you realize that "flexing" the process to satisfy one customer doesn’t mean that you will have to make that same accommodation to all customers.
When quality or customer satisfaction is everyone’s goal, then problems don’t have to be solved by managers alone. Empowered people, aspiring to continuous improvement, can be trained to not only solve the immediate problem, but also to find the root causes and fix them.
After doing a bit of research I found that according to Weber, the bureaucratic form has six major principles. Namely,
1. A formal hierarchical structure
Each level controls the level below and is controlled by the level above. A formal hierarchy is the basis of central planning and centralized decision making. This is similar to the chain-of-command model upon which military organizations are traditionally built.
2. Management by rules
Controlling by rules allows decisions made at high levels to be executed consistently by all lower levels. This is the classic cookie-cutter approach to management. Every peg must fit into a round hole, even if the peg is square!
3. Organization by functional specialty
Work is to be done by specialists, and people are organized into units based on the type of work they do or skills they have. Every person has a job and everyone will do their job. God forbid someone try to something outside the box of their job -- moving outside the box shakes up the entire status quo and steps on everyone who has grown secure within the limitations of their box.
4. Purposely impersonal
The idea is to treat all employees equally and customers equally, and not be influenced by individual differences. In order to be fair, it is mistakenly enshrined that everyone must be treated the same. If different people are treated differently, then it is agrued that they were not being treated fairly. In the ideal bureaucracy, to be equal you must be treated equally rather then being treated equitably.
5. Employment based on technical qualifications
To get the job you must fit the job description. In the ideal bureaucracy it does not matter what your attitude is or what diversity you present, you must have the checklist complete before you move ahead.
6. The Bureaucracy Grows Bigger
Theorist C. Northcote Parkinson demonstrated that the management and professional staff tends to grow at predictable rates, almost without regard to what the line organization is doing. He established the so-called Parkinson's Law - the bureacracy will grow largers.
Are Bureaucracies Ugly??
People in bureaucratic organizations generally blame the ugly side effects of bureaucracy on management, or the founders, or the owners, without awareness that the real cause is organizing based on the
bureaucratic form. It is bureaucratic to think that all functions of planning and control have to be done by management. Transformational leadership is not created.
It is bureaucratic to think that managers and managing are more important than the people who achieve the quality or satisfy individual customers. It is bureaucratic to think that the higher you are on the organization chart, the more important you are.
It seems to be a basic precept of bureaucracy that ambiguity is intolerable and must be resolved. Things must be black or white. There is no room for gray. That is why rules exist and must be applied in a cookie-cutter approach to all.
Ideally though, to achieve total quality or to consistently dazzle customers, your organization and your people must have some tolerance for ambiguity. You have to deal in the real world, facing real problems and real people. In the real world, there is a lot of gray. If you attempt to make things black or white, you miss too much. Rules can be unambiguous, while guidelines are ambiguous, e.g., "If the guidelines don’t work to achieve the mission, then forget the guidelines and do what it takes achieve the mission." That’s pretty gray.
The most widely held, and perhaps the most damaging, belief underlying bureaucracy is the belief that consistency, itself, has value.
Consistency is very important in piece parts that make up a product. And, in the absence of good reason for changing, consistency has value in relationships. But, consistency in choices or decisions can sometimes be a barrier to good quality, or to satisfying customers. For those striving for quality or customer satisfaction, it is valuable to believe that consistency is nice and comfortable as long as it achieves the desired quality or results in satisfied customers. But, the moment that it gets in the way of quality or customer satisfaction, forget consistency and substitute flexibility.
A sister to the idea of consistency is the idea that equal treatment for everybody is fair for all. All you can say about equal treatment for all is that it will result in unequal satisfaction for all. Bureaucracies value the process of equal treatment, but ignore the outcome of unequal satisfaction.
If you strive for an objective outcome, like quality in your product, or customer satisfaction from your service, then examine the idea that equal treatment for all is good. I suggest to you that equal satisfaction for all customers is a better strategy than equal treatment for all customers.
How do you want to be measured–by the treatment you give or by the outcome you achieve? Customers are only interested in getting satisfied. If equal treatment doesn’t satisfy them, then they expect you to treat them unequally. If you are legally or morally wedded to the conclusion that unequal treatment is unjust, then pay attention to the idea of choices. Giving the customer lots of choices makes it possible to provide as many different treatments as customers tell you they need in order to be satisfied.
One example is the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles, the people who provide drivers’ licenses. Until recently, they treated everybody the same. To get a license, you went to the office and stood in line. They didn’t give appointments. By treating everybody the same, they made some people really dissatisfied.
Then, they began offering appointments. If time is important to the customer, the customer can call up for an appointment. If time isn’t that important, or you need something today, you can come anytime and wait in line. By offering a choice, they increased the number of citizens who are satisfied with their service.
Another false belief that is common in bureaucracies is the idea of the "slippery slope": "If I do it for one, I have to do it for everybody."
This is an argument that pops up almost automatically in bureaucratic thinking, and is another sister to the belief in consistency and equal treatment for all. This idea is so pervasive because there are some situations in which it is true. The error is in over-generalizing the idea and applying it where it is patently false and sometimes even foolish.
Organizations that value total quality or customer focus want their people to make decisions and choices based on the mission outcome and not on the process. So, the process becomes much more flexible, as long as it is aimed at achieving the desired outcome. If you have to wrap the product in green to satisfy this customer, you wrap it in green. If you have to deliver the paper to the third floor for this customer, you deliver it to the third floor. You trust that people are reasonable and understanding, and you realize that "flexing" the process to satisfy one customer doesn’t mean that you will have to make that same accommodation to all customers.
When quality or customer satisfaction is everyone’s goal, then problems don’t have to be solved by managers alone. Empowered people, aspiring to continuous improvement, can be trained to not only solve the immediate problem, but also to find the root causes and fix them.
posted by Pete at 9:18 PM
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