Bureaucracy
Identify the symptoms of bureausclerosis that are the most costly and debilitating for your organization.
Identify the elements of your organization’s management model (beliefs and behaviors, roles and structures, and systems and processes) that contribute to bureausclerosis.
Brainstorm “management hacks” that might help to reduce the effects of bureausclerosis.
Provide two or three examples of best hacks experiments you could conduct in your own department. (Here is the name of the video to watch and answer these questions: Busting Bureaucracy by Gary Hamel)
Sample Solution
Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy is ubiquitous, familiar, and deeply entrenched. For most managers, bureaucracy is not merely the “safe” choice, it is the only choice. Symptoms of excessive bureaucracy include a swell of administrators and layers of management, excessive busywork that slows down the decision-making process, insularity, and disempowerment. The bureaucracy in many organizations is for one to many managers. We have managers who oversee managers. When one becomes a manager it seems like they lose their drive to work. Upper management treats the regular employees like numbers. This hurts an organization. The ratio between managers and employees is lopsided. This is costly to the organization.
