Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.

-Laurence J. Peter

A system for controlling or managing a country, company, or organization that is operated by a large number of officials employed to follow rules carefully.

-Cambridge Dictionary

1. History
   1. 2800 BCE Samaria
      1. As the hierarchy of the state outgrows from the hierarchy of the household; bureaucracy is created as the result of development of the written word and economic enterprise. The folks who chose to not labor in the fields became the counters, scribes, and accountants.
      1. Ed Nugget! While researching this, the earliest documentation of the existence of bureaucrats, I found the origin of the term “headcount”. It is literally the accounting of those slain in combat, they were decapitated, and their heads were brought to a central area where the early bureaucrats would count the heads. Thus, perform a headcount.
   1. Rome-Edward Gibbon’s historical classic, The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire.
      1. During the late phases of the decline of Rome (commonly believed to be about 476 AD), during the reign of Diocletian (284-305 AD)
         1. “The number of ministers, of magistrates, of officers, and of servants, who filled the different departments of the state, was mul­tiplied beyond the example of for­mer times; and (if we may bor­row the warm expression of a con­temporary) ‘when the proportion of those who received exceeded the proportion of those who con­tributed the provinces were op­pressed by the weight of tributes.’ From this period to the extinction of the empire it would be easy to deduce an uninterrupted series of clamors and complaints. Accord­ing to his religion and situation, each writer chooses either Diocle­tian or Constantine or Valens or Theodosius, for the object of his invectives; but they unanimously agree in representing the burden of the public impositions, and par­ticularly the land-tax and capita­tion (uniform tax), as the intolerable and in­creasing grievance of their own times.”
   1. The Prince – Machiavelli (1532)

Changing the term prince to organizational leader. Founder etc.

1. “… to enable a prince (Founder) to form an opinion of his staff, there is one test which never fails. When you see someone thinking more of his own interests than of yours, and seeking inwardly his own profit in everything, such a man will never make a good servant (Employee). Nor will you ever be able to trust him because he who has the state of another in his hands ought never to think of himself. He should always think of his prince (Founder) and never pay any attention to matters in which the prince (Founder) is not concerned.

— Chapter XXII

• Catholic Church
  • As the Catholic Church began to grow the first significant hierarchal process was created. From Pope to those significantly distanced from the Vatican, Priests, Monks, and parishioners. and on, had a structured and well-designed path of communication, up and down the organization.
  • Industrial Revolution- Factory floor hierarchy
    • Much like our earlier Samarian example, As factories evolved from blacksmith shops and family producers of all sorts, Masters in the craft were brought in early. They facilitated knowledge upon apprentices and created Journeymen. Who eventually proved themselves to be masters. We still see this today in many trades. But when mass production was being done a hierarchy of knowledge/skills and the need for communication protocols was introduced, mimicking the Church’s (Walton & Huey, 1993)s proven hierarchical example.
• 20^th Century
  • Max Weber- Class, Status, Party describesWeberian stratification (1922) (Wikipedia)
    • Bureaucratic model (rational-legal model)
      • Max Weber’s theory of bureaucracy, also known as the “rational-legal” model, attempts to explain bureaucracy from a rational point of view.[60] Firstly, Weber argued that bureaucracy is “based on the general principle of precisely defined and organized across-the-board competencies of the various offices” which are “underpinned by rules, laws, or administrative regulations.”In particular, Weber notes three aspects that “constitute the essence of bureaucratic administration” in the public sector, and “the essence of a bureaucratic management of a private company” in the private sector:
        • A rigid division of labor is established that clearly identifies regular tasks and duties of the particular bureaucratic system.Regulations describe firmly established chains of command and the duties and capacity to coerce others to comply.Hiring people with particular, certified qualifications supports regular and continuous execution of the assigned duties.
        In this sense, Weber would explain bureaucracy through nine main characteristics/principles:
        • Specialized rolesRecruitment based on merit (e.g. tested through open competition)Uniform principles of placement, promotion, and transfer in an administrative systemCareerism with a systematic salary structureHierarchy, responsibility, and accountabilitySubjection of official conduct to strict rules of discipline and controlSupremacy of abstract rulesImpersonal authority (e.g. office bearer does not bring the office with them)Political neutralityBenefits of bureaucracyAs Weber noted, real bureaucracy is less optimal and effective than his ideal-type model. Each of Weber’s principles can degenerate, especially when used to analyze individual levels in an organization. However, when implemented in a group setting in an organization, some form of efficiency and effectiveness can be achieved, especially with regard to better output. This is especially true when the Bureaucratic Model emphasizes qualification (merits), specialization of job scope
        (labor), the hierarchy of power, rules, and discipline.
    • Weaknesses of bureaucracy
      • Competencies, efficiency, and effectiveness can be unclear and contradictory, especially when dealing with oversimplified matters. In a dehumanized bureaucracy – inflexible in distributing the job scope, with every worker having to specialize from day one without rotating tasks for fear of decreasing output – tasks are often routine and can contribute to boredom. Thus, employees can sometimes feel that they are not part of the organization’s work vision and mission. Consequently, they do not have any sense of belonging in the long term. Furthermore, this type of organization tends to invite exploitation and underestimate the potential of the employees, as the creativity of the workers is brushed aside in favor of strict adherence to rules, regulations, and procedures.[60]
      • “Bureaucratic administration means fundamental domination through knowledge.”

— Max Weber

This is fine, in a perfect world. But we do not live in a perfect or rational world.

• Frederick Taylor- Principles of Scientific Management
  • Taylor felt that if organizations were run like machines, then it would be ideal because all tasks were clear-cut and simple.Tasks typically did not allow for flexibility, creativity, or originality.
  • There must be a clear-cut distinction between managers who think and workers who do the work.

Taylor’s perspective does not account for worker motivations, interpersonal relationships, and economic variances in organizations.

• Post-WWII knowledge workers
  • GI Bill of Rights- 1944The creation of the G.I. Bill and its subsequent variants are credited with creating a positive post-war economy.Upon return from the war, the veteran’s utilization of the Bills benefits created exponential growth in colleges and universities as millions opted for advanced education.Of the 16 million WWII vets, 7.8 million participated in education and/or training programs, making college a cornerstone of American life.Historian Ed Humes, in a 2009 interview with Marketplace.com staff stated, “The G.I. Bill provided the education for 14 Nobel Prize winners, three Supreme Court justices, three presidents, a dozen senators, and two dozen Pulitzer Prize winners.” (Marketplace Staff, 2009)Homeownership prior to the G.I. bill was an unreachable dream for most Americans. Under the Bill, WWII veterans took advantage of the included home loan guarantee by buying over 2.4 million homes. (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs)By 1950 the first post-war graduates were entering the workforce.
  • Post-War Presence and acceptance of risk
    • Advancements
      • The Cessna 182, the most prolific personal aircraft ever made. The airframe is the same today as it was when first produced in 1957.
        • Sold for $14,300. Same plane today $89+A new 182, built this year, $600,000+
        The SR-71 Blackbird. Still believed to be the fastest manned, atmospheric aircraft built, was designed 1 year later, in 1958.Boeing 707, the first jet airliner made its debut in 1957.
        • 570 miles per hour cruise. (The current Boeing 737 travels at the same cruise speed)
        In the late 1950s Popular Mechanics magazine and many others were promoting the coming of “zero gravity” transportation. In 2002, Nick Cook (editor of Jane’s Aviation Weekly) investigated why the idea disappeared. His findings are in his book The Hunt For Zero Point.
      Beliefs of future
      • J. Storrs Hall best describes this in his book” Where is My Flying Car?” If you like any bit of what I say in this episode, you need to read this book!
        • A hundred years ago, people KNEW that the future was going to be wonderful:“It is not really necessary to look too far into the future; we see enough already to be certain it will be magnificent. Only let us hurry and open the roads.” Wilbur WrightHalf a century ago, The Jetsons foretold that by today we would have jet cars, live in space, and have robot assistants.We should already be in the near-dystopian future (2019) defined in Philip K. Dick’s 1968, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Blade Runner).1989’s Back to the Future II saw 2015 as having flying cars and cold fusion for the masses.Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Sentinel” was the basis for 2001: A Space Odyssey” Looks like we fell short here too.
      NASA- From the first Earth orbit in 1962 to the Lunar landing in 1969, just over 7 years.
      • Artemis, the next NASA/Boeing Lunar lander has been in the works since 2017 and does not plan for a lunar visit until 2025. 8 years
      Other things believed to be prolific by now (thanks again to J. Storrs Hall):
      • Orbital Space Stations available to the publicLunar Landings and BasesNuclear RocketsInterplanetary TravelAtomic batteriesFusion PowerTransportation at hypersonic speed for less than $.01Per M Flying Cars more popular than road vehiclesCures for Cancer, common cold and tooth decay. (Nixon promised a War on cancer in 1971. Devoting government resources and $100M in funding) Did not get us anywhere near a cure.
    • Automobiles…. I think you get the point!

So, Why haven’t we reached all these goals and dreams?

The Great Stagnation… Theil and Hall

Regulation affects Bits vs Atoms

Where does regulation come from? Bureaucracies!

We get to start with the government bureaucracies but just wait. It isn’t all their fault.

Remember the 7.8 million post-war college grads that went looking for knowledge-work jobs instead of returning to family farms and small-town manual labor?

Let’s say they entered the workforce from 1950 to 1952 (3 to 6 years of school or gaps) 10 to 12 years later, in 1962 President Kennedy calls the United States to work together to reach the Moon.

The 8-year high-risk call to a Lunar landing put a hold on a pattern of drift. Which we spoke about in Episode 3 conveniently titled Drift.

You can watch risk-based behaviors in, retail, aviation, automobiles, farm equipment, TV and so much more began to grow and develop new systems and processes in the 60s.

Here are some examples of the pattern I propose:

Public Space Shuttle testing began in 1976. Ten years later, in 1986, Challenger exploded shortly after take-off. Take out over two years of grounding, and restructuring and you have about 15ish years of drift when, In 2003, Columbia broke apart during re-entry.

But you can read Wayne Hale’s Blog (that is what it is called, which makes it easy to find) It will not take you long to start finding all kinds of kerfuffles and near-misses that occurred during those years. Enough that I can say that the short-term shutdowns and system and process rebuilds could almost take 3 years off the 15 we give NASA.

Meta went public in 2012- 11 years later mass firings and restructuring.

Twitter went public in 2013- 10 years later mass firings and restructuring.

Hey everyone, this is “Future Eddie”

After recording this episode an article popped up in my LinkedIn feed that I just had to add here.

AutoNews.com published an article recently that fits this idea on my 10ish-year bureaucratic drift theory of mine. There is a paywall on this article so it may be difficult to access, I will put the link in the show notes.

If you cannot get to the article, do not fret, I bet, this will be in the mainstream media by the time this episode airs or shortly thereafter.

The background: in 2006 the CEO of Boeing, Alan Mulally was enticed to move over the Ford and fix the company’s massive decline. Which Mulally did in spades. Fun fact: Bryce Hoffman, wrote an account of this turn-around called American Icon. Hoffman is also the author of Red Teaming; a book devoted to processes we will be discussing at great length in future episodes.

Mulally led Ford through the 2008 crisis and was able to turn down government support which all the other manufacturers did not. Ford went on to rise out of debt and become profitable in a few short years under Mulally’s leadership. Mulally retired from Ford in 2014.

Now, to the article.

Current Ford CEO Jim Farley (who replace Mulally in 2014) has announced that Ford is working at a significant disadvantage against other automakers when it comes to sourcing and designing vehicles. …the internal dysfunction Mulally fought against over a decade ago has since returned.

CEO Jim Farley stated:

“We can cut the cost and the people and do it quickly,” Farley said. “But the reality is if you don’t change the efficiency of engineering, supply chain, and manufacturing – the way people work – it’ll all grow back.”

So, from 2014 to 2023, only 9 years, Ford went from being at the top of their game to being unable to compete.

There is a lot to dive into here. As more information becomes available, I am already excited to devote an episode to Ford’s issues.

And now, Back to the regularly scheduled program

8-10 years of 1960’s risk acceptance put a hold on the bureaucratic drift pattern, 1970, we started to see the rise of government Bureaucracy. It all starts with

Government Oversight & Regulation

I looked up 13 of the Alphabet Soup organizations that I felt most impacted our business environment. I left out the IRS just to keep from making myself angry.

• EPA- 1970
  • OSHA- 1970
  • FDA- 1970
  • ATF- 1972
  • MSHA-1977
  • USDA- 1862
  • FAA- 1958
  • Bureau of Labor- 1913
  • BLM- 1946
  • Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE)- 2011
  • CDC- 1946
  • DOE- 1977
  • DOT- 1967

If the opening Cambridge Dictionary definition of Bureaucracy is correct, The above-mentioned entities are full of people who can only follow rules. If they are unable to divert from said rules when something does not fit the current list of rules, they are forced to create a new rule so they can follow it. To a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So, if an entire organization is completely risk-averse and unable to operate outside of rules, how do they believe all the organizations upon which they have influence need to work?

With this rule-following behavior in place, bureaucrats will require regulation and reporting demands on the organizations they now have control over to manage, monitor, and report specific information. Thus, those organizations now must hire and file roles to comply with the government’s demands. These folks, whose lot in life is to follow rules and then supply rule-following data to rule-creating entities, fill the halls of organizations large and small. That is a lot of non-income-producing (horizontal) folks who have the little-to-no drive to better the organization.

In my late teens and twenties, I met numerous folks who outright claimed that their dream job was to work in a government job. I quote: “So they would have great benefits and not have to worry about getting fired.”  I did not hang out around them long enough to find out if they achieved their goal.

Another Ed Nugget: John Maxwell, in his world-class leadership book and course The 5 Levels of Leadership, describes the lowest, least effective, and in my experience worst level of management as Position

A person who fits this bottom-of-the-list role has the title of leader, but that is all. They lead using the following traits:

• Top-Down “I’m over you.”
• Separation “Don’t let people get close to you.”
• Image “Fake it till you make it.”
• Strength “Never let them see you sweat.”
• Selfishness “You are here to help me.”
• Power “I determine your future.”
• Intimidation “Do this or Else!”
• Rules “The manual says…”

Know anyone that fits this style? Now you need to know that we are all leaders, in one way or another we are being looked up to by someone. So, no matter your role, acting like the above is not effective leading, nor is it socially acceptable outside of tyranny. Just say’n.

Government regulation has caused bureaucracies to form in businesses. Yes, bureaucracy breeds like rabbits. It expands throughout organizations.

Sam Walton speaks to this in his biography, Made In America. I am going to read a section of the book shortly. This book was written by Sam within the last couple of years of his life. He chose to write it for those who followed him as leader of Walmart, giving them a roadmap on its needs.

For the record, Walmart was started in 1962.

It has been said that no one remembers how you start, they only remember how you end. Well, the same holds true for authors…put the important points at the end of the book.

Sam discusses bureaucracy in the 15^th of his 18 chapters. The section I will read to you now is titled:

Stay Lean, Fight Bureaucracy

Anytime a company grows as fast as Wal-Mart has, pockets of duplication are going to build up, and there are areas of the business which we may no longer need. No boss or employee really likes to dwell on such matters: it’s only human not to want to have your job, or the jobs of the people who work for you, eliminated. But it is absolutely the responsibility of a company’s top management to be thinking about this issue all the time- to ensure a sound future for the overall company.

One way I’ve approached this is by sticking to the same formula I used back when we had about five stores. In those days, I tried to operate on a 2 percent general office expense structure. In other words, 2 percent of sales should have been enough to carry our buying office, our general office expense, my salary, Bud’s salary- and after we started adding district managers or any other officers- their salaries too. Believe it or not, we haven’t changed that basic formula from five stores to two thousand stores. In fact, we are actually operating at a far lower percentage today in the office overhead than we did thirty years ago, and that includes tremendous expenses for computer support and distribution centers. Really, it includes everything that we supply centrally in the way of support for the stores.

Some folks in retail business have asked me where I came up with the 2 percent formula, and the truth is I just pulled it out of the air. In the early days, most companies charged 5 percent of their sales to run their offices. But we have always operated lean. We have operated with fewer people. We have had our people do more than in other companies. I think we came to work earlier and stayed later. It has been our heritage- our obsession- that we would be more productive and more efficient than our competition. And we’ve accomplished that goal.

A lot of first-time visitors are kind of shocked by our executive offices. Most people say my office and those of the other Wal-Mart executives looks like something you’d find in a truck terminal. We’re in a one-story office-warehouse building. The offices aren’t real big, and the walls are covered with inexpensive paneling. We never had fancy furniture or thick carpet, or suites with bars for our executives. I like them just like they are. We sure as heck won’t win any interior decorating awards, but they’re all we need, and they must be working fine. Just ask our shareholders.

David Glass (CEO):

“If you don’t zero in on your bureaucracy every so often, you will naturally build in layers. You never set out to add bureaucracy. You just get it. Period. Without even knowing it. So you always have to be looking to eliminate it. You know when Tom Watson, Sr., was running IBM, he decided they would never have more than four layers from the chairman of the board to the lowest level in the company. That may have been one of the greatest single reasons why IBM was successful.

“A lot of this goes back to what Deming told the Japanese a long time ago: do it right the first time. The natural tendency when you’ve got a problem in a company is to come up with a solution to fix it. Too often, the solution is nothing more than adding another layer. What you should be doing is going to the source of the problem to fix it, and sometimes that requires shooting the culprit.

“I’ll give you an example that just drove Sam crazy until we started doing something about it. When merchandise came into the back of the store, it was supposed to be marked at the right price or marked correctly on the spot. But because it often wasn’t getting done properly, we created positions called test scanners, making sure everything is priced correctly. There’s another layer right there, and Sam didn’t ever visit a store without asking if we really needed these folks.

“Well, we still have some, but what we’ve done is overhaul our back=office procedures to make sure we get it right more often the first time, and, in the process, we eliminated one and a half people out of the office in every Wal-Mart store in the company. That’s big bucks.

“Really it’s a pretty simple philosophy. What you have to do is just draw a line in the dirt, and force the bureaucracy back behind that line. And then know for sure that a year will go by and it will be back across that line, and you’ll have to do the same thing again.”

Back to Sam..

I guess the one reason I feel so strongly about not letting egos get out of control around Wal-Mart it that a lot of bureaucracy is really the product of some empire builder’s ego. Some folks have a tendency to build up big staffs around them to emphasize their own importance, and we don’t need any of that at Wal-Mart. If your not serving the customer, or supporting the folks who do, we don’t need you. When we’re thinking small, that’s another thing we’re always on the lookout for: big egos. You don’t have to have a small ego to work here, but you’d better know how to make it look small, or you might wind up in trouble.

So you see what I mean when I say you have to thin small to grow big. And really, I don’t have any doubt that Wal-Mart will stay the course and reach $100 Billion in sales by the year 2000. It’s a challenge. Nothing like it has ever been done before, but our folks will do it. And now I’m going to confess to a really radical thought I’ve been having lately, I probably won’t do anything about it, but the folks who come after me are eventually going to have to face up to this question. Even by thinking small, can a $100 billion retailer really function efficiently and productively as it should? Or, would maybe five $20 billion companies work better?

In episode 6: The Peter Principle, we dove into the ideas that every person reaches a point within their career or an organizations hierarchy where they are no longer competent. They cannot perform their allotted duties.

When Sam spoke to the idea that “bureaucracy is really the product of some empire builder’s ego. Some folks have a tendency to build up big staffs around them to emphasize their own importance…”

Sam is right on target. Once a person reaches incompetence, they must, to continue getting paid, be perceived to have importance. At this point, a person in this position enters survival mode. Fight or flight. Panic. Does this sound like someone you want in control of your business process?

Just wait, there’s more.

Now you have a person that has been promoted into a role that has incited total incompetence and panic. To survive, they start hiring people to grow the perception of importance of the department AND surround the incompetent person with people who know how to do the job. This is often performed in a safe-for-the-incompetent-person style of breaking up tasks into smaller pieces and hiring only folks who can do the single piece. Not someone who understands the who enchilada.

A person who understands the entire picture of the department, is a threat to the incompetent person’s well-being and will never be allowed a role.

So, you have an incompetent person, hiring incompetent people to protect oneself. Putting the organization at risk and harm. This person is also stealing money, their salary, and stealing/misappropriating funds through the hiring of unneeded personnel. Again, all to protect themselves.

Your organization does not matter to them, it is the cash cow they will ride to its end. And by their own actions they accelerate the ride.

Having said all that, Remember the Peter Principle: In a hierarchy EVERY EMPLOYEE tends to rise to his/her level of Incompetence.

Hold that thought…

Steve Jobs in a 1995 interview stated-
“I’ve built a lot of my success off finding these “truly gifted” people, and not settling for ‘B” and “C” players, but really going for the “A” players. … I found that when you get enough “A” players together, when you go through the incredible work to find five of these “A” players, they REALLY like working with each other because they have never had a chance to do that before. And, they don’t want to work with “B” and “C” players, and so it becomes self-policing, and they only want to hire more “A” players, so you build up these pockets of “A” players, and it propagates …”

We will talk about A players shortly.

Let’s look at average organization, meaning those not run by a 1995 Steve Jobs. What he stated is in the inverse. Think about it.

If A players find each other, self-police, and propagate. Then the B’s, C’s, D’s and F’s do as well.

Watch your breakroom and common areas. “A” players are running around looking for other A’s across the organization. B, C and D’s are hanging out together, with others within their hierarchal scope. And then they propagate and assist in covering up each other’s incompetence.

Nefarious/malicious people find each other. HOW? Remember these folks are stealing and harming your organization.

How do two people in an organization find each other and choose to work together to propagate failure?

Retail example of Malicious Cashier Teaming

This is why, when achieving my bachelor’s in business administration, I concentrated on both I/O and Criminal Psychologies.

Then, there are serial business killers. There are many of these running around in every industry. And they get away with it because B-and-lower players in HR departments and bureaucratic regulation agencies do not allow you to ask a former employer what a potential hire is like or what they have done. Legally, all you get when asked is a yes or no that they worked there and from when to exit date.

Serial business killers will exit a business just as they see their gig is up. But before they get fired. They take their current title (though incompetent) and use it to gain an equal or higher role in the organization.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

So. How do I fix or build my organization to mitigate bureaucracy you ask?

1. Stop panic hiring. I know it’s an age-old adage, but hire slow, and fire fast. There will be a whole episode or more devoted to this but in short…
   1. Founders and early start-ups.
      1. Hire A players and nothing less. Draw a line in the dirt.Annual or more often review your employees. Ask how they are doing and what can you supply them to stay up on knowledge and abilities as the company adapts and grows.Either have a flat “hierarchy” of no more than a few levels.Make sure to perform regular evals after promotions.Get good quality justification for departmental expansion and do not allow for fractionalizing tasks, force the hiring of A players.
   1. Existing organizations:
      1. Cull your staff. It hurts but you must do it. Suck it up Buttercup. You chose this line of work. Get lean.Every person who hires and your HR department personnel must be A players. These are your foundation builders. Keep them amazing.Follow Sam Walton, Draw a line in the dirt and make sure everyone knows their job requirements and how they will be evaluated. These are not threats or fear tactics. It’s just the way it is.
      1. Quit using emotion to hire and fire. Look for skills and experience. Are they capable of continued learning? If so, they will be able to promote more often than those that cannot.

B level players (and below) WILL NOT HIRE “A” PLAYERS. It puts their sham at risk.

If you have an organization of B and lower folks who are willing to steal salaries and revenue to keep a job, they will stop at nothing. Those who have data, revenue or matrices that flow through their departments, will manipulate the data to make their department look as though it is working efficiently. They will choose what data they can control, how to “math” it up or down, and utilize reporting systems that remove details and invoke comfort through macro data. If you receive data from a manager that utilizes a dashboard of percentages and Red/Green graphs and lines, you had better start looking into their systems and process.

Think about that!  How many departments in your organization do or may have incompetent managers that are manipulating the data you use to make decisions.

How long has it been manipulated?

How many levels are manipulated?

How real is the final collection of data that you see?

If each and every one of those incompetent, panicky, and survival-oriented folks is manipulating something, you are currently running your organization on some level of lies. The truth of your organization cannot be hidden forever. Once it starts to raise its ugly head, it has been forced into the bottle for so long, and you will have a very difficult and maybe even impossible recovery.

Look what Twitter had become a fat, bureaucratic entity. Full of people who “knew” they were free to do whatever they wanted. It took Elon culling the majority of its personnel, keeping the “A’s” to create a lean and, so he says, nearly profitable organization. Painful, but needed to save the company.

All these B and lower folks, make up most of the average organization. Remember, Everyone reaches incompetence.

Is your organization made up of a group of people “employed to follow rules carefully”? If so, you have B-level employees and lower. Your organization is already being taken advantage of.

Is your organization allowing “empire builder’s ego” to lead areas and departments? If so, you have B-level employees and lower running around unfettered. Your organization is being drained of life.

I am not here to fix long-entrenched government bureaucracies. But if I can impart some wisdom to those who can or will take on that lofty goal, I will call that a success. If you are one of those who are in a government agency at any level, you have influence. Whatever you do within your scope of influence to create change makes a non-trivial difference. DO NOT DISPARE!

If you cannot tell, I am taking corporate bureaucracy on. Head on. I refuse to allow substandard employees to harm the lives, hopes, and dreams of the A players and frontline workers.

I cannot fight this battle alone. I challenge you to pay attention and look for those who have become incompetent. Identify them and either assist them in gaining needed skills or knowledge to become competent or oust them if they are unwilling or capable.

Leaders, draw that line in the dirt right now! Set a precedence, and push the B players back to that line NOW! Create a path to keeping that incompetence, behind your line from now on.

I think we have discussed the basic points of Bureaucracy.  I guarantee I will be returning to this topic in future episodes, and diving deeper into ideas and real-world observations and how they are pertinent within businesses and organizations today.

Links to all the quoted resources are in the show notes and in the transcript on my website, Eddiekillian.com

Join me next Tuesday as we continue to travel the path of what is difficult, perilous, and uncertain as we explore introducing A New Order of Things.

I am your host, Eddie Killian. And this concludes Episode Eight.

References

Cambridge Dictionary. (2022, January 25). Bureaucracy. Retrieved from Cambridge Dictionary: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/distracteddriving

Clark, A. C. (2000). The Sentinel. New York: i Books.

Cook, N. (2003). The Hunt For Zero Point. Boston: Crown.

Cowen, T., & Gross, D. (2022). Talent. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Dick, P. K. (1968). Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? New York: Gollancz.

Gibbon, E. (1946). The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. New York: Heritage Press.

Hall, J. S. (2021). Where is My Flying Car? San Francisco: Stripe Press.

Marketplace Staff. (2009, October 6). How the GI Bill Changed the Economy. Retrieved from Marketplace.org: https://www.marketplace.org/2009/10/06/how-gi-bill-changed-economy/

Maxwell, J. C. (2011). The 5 Levels of Leadership. New York: Center Street.

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. (n.d.). Born of Controversy: The GI Bill of Rights. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Walton, S., & Huey, J. (1993). Made In America: My Story. New York: Doubleday.

Weber, M. (1978). Economy and Society: an outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press.