Bureaucracy

Getting Around Bureaucracy

by Cindy Ventrice

Some organizations are downright sluggish. Processes move through the system like molasses, making the organization ineffective.

Bureaucracy. Consumers hate it. When they come in contact, they recoil; they look for ways to go around it or avoid it (and us), completely.

Employees hate it even more. When they are immersed in a cumbersome system that gets in the way of their "real" work, they feel ineffective. Nothing frustrates an employee more than a sense of powerlessness. In workshops, when I address this sense of powerlessness, employees tell me "There's nothing we can do. We'll lose their jobs if we don't conform [to the existing, bureaucratic system]."

Wouldn't it be great if every company had a program in place to reduce redundancy and weed out wasteful tasks? GE has such a program. The purpose of their trademarked program, Work-Out, is to remove wasteful activity and free people up for "more profound work." People who streamline work, are heroes.

But what about government agencies? There, the rules come from way up the chain of command. What can these employees do about ineffective processes?

When Lorraine Monroe became principal of Harlem's Frederick Douglass School, it was well known for violence, poor attendance and low level academic achievement. Five years later student test scores ranked among New York City's best and 96% of it's graduating class went on to college!

Her advice? Ms. Monroe says, "Don't be afraid to break the rules - but only for the sake of your mission. I cultivated the ability to ignore bureaucratic edicts. I practiced delaying implementation of contrived and mandated "solutions" - solutions that invariably missed the mark."

Prioritize. Don't be afraid to focus on what's important, first. Get to the time-wasters, last. If you run out of time... what's important is already done. You will have produced real results. Will that make you a hero, or will you lose your job? If you are results driven, and you do you lose your job to a bureaucratic system, a better one awaits you.