The Busting Bureaucracy Hackathon

The organizations that survive the future will be those that are capable of changing as fast as change itself.

Today, few organizations seem to be able to out-run change for more than a few years at a time. To build organizations that are adaptable at their core, we will need to rework every management process so it enables, rather than frustrates, breakthrough thinking and relentless experimentation. Innovation will need to become instinctual and intrinsic.  The notion of the economically-dependent, easily biddable “employee” will have to be ditched.

The goal:  a workplace where initiative, creativity and passion flourish, and where the line separating vocation and avocation disappear.

For any of this to happen, bureaucracy must die.  Why?  Because bureaucracy …

• Adds overhead—by creating multi-tiered structures where hundreds of managers spend their time managing other managers.
• Creates friction—by forcing new ideas to run a multi-level gauntlet of approval that creates significant lag between “sense” and “respond.”
• Distorts decisions—by giving too much power to senior executives who often have much of their emotional equity invested in the past.
• Misallocates power—by rewarding those who are the most politically adept rather than those who are the most capable leaders.
• Discourages dissent—by creating asymmetric power relationships that make it difficult for subordinates to speak up.
• Misdirects competition—by encouraging individuals to compete for promotion and political advantage.
• Thwarts innovation—by over-weighting experience and under-weighting unconventional thinking.
• Hobbles initiative—by throwing up barriers to risk-taking.
• Obliterates nuance—by centralizing too many decisions and demanding compliance with uniform rules and procedures.

In all these different ways, bureaucracy imposes a “management tax.” Like arterial plaque, it is mostly invisible, but no less dangerous because of that.   To avoid the management tax, we will need to find ways of buying control, coordination and consistency “duty free.”  Thankfully, information technology can help us do exactly that.

Modern bureaucracy emerged at a time when information was mostly paper-based, and expensive to move.  The traditional hierarchy, with it’s narrow span-of-control, was a response to this problem.  Ten or so subordinates would channel information up to a manager who would then summarize the data and push it further up the chain of command.  In this model of “consolidate and escalate,” those at the top really did know more.

When challenged, they could defend their decisions on the basis of superior knowledge (whether or not their decisions were really fact-based.) In addition, those at the top typically had long tenures and could claim to be more experienced than their subordinates—another justification for top-down decision-making.  But today, thanks to IT, information can be easily stored, shared and customized, and with each new advance in communications and information technology, the rationale for bureaucracy dwindles further.

Yet when it comes to killing bureaucracy, most leaders are still fiddling at the margins.  They have flattened the formal hierarchy, but haven’t eliminated it.  They have celebrated empowerment, but haven’t surrendered their own prerogatives.  They have encouraged employees to speak up, but have balked at the idea of letting them choose their own leaders.  They have deployed collaboration tools across the enterprise, but haven’t given associates the right to hack outdated strategies or sclerotic processes.  They have set up idea wikis, but still allocate resources top-down.  They have denounced bureaucracy, but haven’t actually dethroned it.

Why?  Two reasons, I think.  First, like all of us, they are prisoners of precedent.  Most of us grew up in and around organizations that fit a common template, where …

• Big leaders appointed little leaders
• Power was a function of position
• Senior executives set strategy
• Everyone reported to a boss
• Tasks were assigned
• Managers doled out rewards
• Compensation correlated with rank
• Promotion was the measure of achievement
• Autonomy was tightly proscribed.

This is the management model found in most schools, religious organizations, government agencies and businesses.  No wonder it’s hard to imagine a company like WL Gore, a leader in advanced materials, where associates choose their own leaders; or Morning Star, the world’s largest tomato processor, where you won’t find a single vestige of formal hierarchy; or Haier, the Chinese home appliance maker that recently divided itself into 2,000 highly autonomous profit centers; or Red Hat, the enterprise software company where everyone gets to shape strategy through an open innovation process.

We’re actively working not only to imagine alternatives to the bureaucratic management model, but to invent them as well with this Busting Bureaucracy Hackathon.