How To Fight Bureaucracy

Here is my own story about how i dealt with bureaucracy –

I worked for a Fortune 50 company. When I was promoted into middle management, I was assigned to a group that handled Regulatory work. We had to deal with executives in our corporate headquarters. There were the typical meetings, phone calls, analysis, drafts and re-drafts.

One of the people I supported, Mac (he reported to me), became very proficient, knowledgeable and distinguished himself as source of excellent analysis. Mac and I had a good relationship. He knew he could pop into my office anytime he wanted to discuss work or to just talk.

Mac and I had been working with a Vice President, Alex, at corporate headquarters. We developed a good working relationship with Alex. There was good chemistry and we all seemed to work together. All of this was during the days of high bureaucracy and when management levels were saluted with military precision. There was a chain of command that had to be followed.

I vividly recall one day when Mac came into my office with a perplexed look on his face. He told me that he was concerned that Alex was calling him directly with requests for information rather than calling me first.

I asked Mac if Alex was satisfied with his analysis. He said yes. I asked Mike if he needed me to complete the detailed analyses he was conducting. Mike said no. I said, “Alex doesn’t need to get me involved, just let me know how things are going and let me know if I can help you.”

Politically this was a stupid move. I could have increased my political credentials with Alex, even though I wasn’t adding much value. I detested office politics and the corporate bureaucracy. There was no reason for me to waste time by dutifully following the chain of command.

I’ll never know for sure how this incident influenced my career, but I was promoted a year later.

Fortunately the corporate command and control systems have eased. However, corporate organizations are still political and there is still the temptation to improve your “credentials” by using command and control management to your advantage. But if you are to improve as a leader and let your people to show their stuff and grow, sometimes you just have to get out of the way.

Here are some additional resources –

• Read about a cautionary tale of how bureaucracy rears its head in the corporate lifecycle. (Click on image)
• Learn how to Bust Bureaucracy in your organization
• View a BusinessWeek video
• Get a free e-book Busting Bureaucracy learn more about the book Here

The highly successful GE Work-Out contributed to eliminating bureaucracy. GE offers limited services to other companies on this program. But do a search on “GE work-out” and you will find many related resources and consulting services.

Now you are armed to battle that bureaucracy vampire.

Knowledge Sharing Goes Virtual

One of my past posts covered Knowledge Management (KM). One of KM’s issues is sharing knowledge. Well, leave it to some creative web developers to design web-based knowledge sharing applications. Over the recent past, I’ve noticed a proliferation in the number of sites that allow you to access documents, presentations, videos and even books, mostly for free. These sites also allow you to post your own masterpieces.

Let me review some of the better sites.

One of the first sites I found is Scribd –

This is a “kitchen sink”: you can search on just about any topic and find something, though the search engine is a bit funky. The first 10-20 results are relevant but as you go further down the list, some of the results are a stretch. Nevertheless, you are able to get some valuable resources. I found a complete book on Corporate Governance.

You do have to register to download and upload, but you don’t get annoying emails.

A newcomer is Google’s Knol –

Since it is new, the inventory is not as robust as Scribd. But with Google’s reputation, Knol is likely to eventually be the top performer.

One that I like is DocStoc. Results from the search are good. While I was writing this, I downloaded a document. They also display related results. You do have to register but worth it.

Here are a few more kitchen sinks — Squidoo and PdfGeni.

Seems that academia has caught the trend too–

There is AllAcademic decent search results, access to some online journals and research tips. If you need more scholarly research this is a good site.

Another good source of scholarly research is the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). This is a premier site. Well organized, wide variety of subject matter and may research reports that have been published in journals. Registration required.

There are more of these Knowledge Sharing sites. If you’ve found worthy sites, please post and share your findings.

Corporations Seek Creativity

In previous posts, I have commented on how the corporate world is getting increasingly complex. So much so that the current menu of tools and techniques are becoming less effective. I found an interesting article on the website of the Australian Graduate School of Management (Read the article).

One of the defining abilities for 21st century managers is how they deal with ‘wicked problems’ – that is, problems that are socially so complex that they don’t have straightforward answers and for which the past does not prove to be a reliable predictor of the future. Grappling with wicked problems is arguably the greatest and most exciting challenge for today’s manager who needs to adopt new ways of thinking to discover solutions.

And in a 2005 article BusinessWeek mentioned –

What was once central to corporations — price, quality, and much of the left-brain, digitized analytical work associated with knowledge — is fast being shipped off to lower-paid, highly trained Chinese and Indians, as well as Hungarians, Czechs, and Russians. Increasingly, the new core competence is creativity — the right-brain stuff that smart companies are now harnessing to generate top-line growth. The game is changing. It isn’t just about math and science anymore. It’s about creativity, imagination, and, above all, innovation.

No wonder that corporate recruiters are increasingly hiring MFAs instead of MBAs. Companies are also looking into how to promote creativity in their organizations. The CEO and the C-suite must set the tone at the top that encourages a creative corporate culture. Other initiatives are to back this up with with rewarding creativity via special awards (3M) and as components of the compensation plan (GE). See other techniques in the table below.

I found a good website America Creativity Association with many great resources. If you are just starting to use creativity in your organization, take the Readiness Test.

Another good site is CREATE There are good examples of managing creativity, techniques and case studies. An added benefit: no ads.

Now get those creative juices flowing.

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