Why I Love Bureaucracy: Why We Should All Love It

Mindful Bureaucracy

I love bureaucracy!

Wait, what?!

Yes, that’s right. I love that thing we all love to hate.

Bureaucracy brings structure, discipline, consistency, predictability and efficiency to an organization’s operations. Instead of creating ad hoc processes as we go, we use bureaucracy to establish a clear path and guidelines for how to operate. Without it, we have chaos. So what’s not to love about bureaucracy?!

Mindless bureaucracy, that’s what.

Mindless, dogmatic, untested and unchallenged policies and procedures. That’s the worst. When we explain why we do something by saying, “because that’s our policy” or  “that’s the way we’ve always done it,” we have bureaucracy run amok.

Where Bureaucracy Happens

Speaking of bureaucracy, our organization’s management team recently raised concerns about our meeting-heavy culture. Everyone felt we were going to so many meetings that it was difficult to find time to get any real work done. As part of dealing with this issue, we researched best practices for making meetings more focused, purposeful and efficient.

During a follow-up meeting, we reviewed and discussed the merits of a new structured meeting template. The template established a guide for meetings using topic categories such as “status of open action items” and “short-term successes, opportunities and threats.” We then discussed the pros and cons of adopting the template as the format for managing future team meetings.

One of the team members raised a concern that the new format felt “antiseptic.” He explained that he enjoyed the relaxed, free-flowing meeting approach we’d been following to date. He feared using the new structured template would stifle the team’s otherwise lively and thoughtful exchange of ideas.

Ultimately, because we developed the new meeting template in response to concerns about too many and inefficiently managed meetings, we decided to give it a try. However, we made the decision with mindful attention to the potential downside of imposing a more structured and disciplined format. And, in order to address the concerns about the new template, we added another item at the end of the agenda: Did we achieve our meeting objective? What is one specific suggestion for improvement?

This meeting improvement process may sound boring, but it represents mindful bureaucracy –  the kind I love. We took an organizational and management challenge and worked to develop a solution. Most solutions to organizational and management challenges involve developing and implementing new structures and processes that everyone agrees to. If they take hold, new structures and processes eventually become policies and procedures. These are the signs and guideposts that help us operate effectively.

Inviting Tests and Challenges

The problem is we often forget the original reason why we established the structures and processes we now follow. Losing track of the underlying purpose of our policies and procedures is a fundamental organizational risk. In order for bureaucracy to work and be the kind we can love, we must invite challenges and push back. If the guidelines we are following don’t make sense to us, they may need to be changed or updated to reflect our current context and environment.

It is a mindful bureaucracy that responds to and addresses real needs and eagerly welcomes challenges and tests over time.

Originally posted on GovLoop by Jefferey.