The Busting Bureaucracy Hackathon

When I see the categories defined as the needed ‘post-bureaucratic hacks’ , I can’t help to see it’s all about people and how people interact together, or better hacking the flaws in that context and about reaching goals, or better not reaching them as efficient or effective as we should.
It should be important to keep in mind that any organization’s reason for existence is reaching those goals (not going into those goals as such by the way…) . I think this is the easiest aspect to define.
They should be reached as efficient and effective as possible, period.
But when we start discussing about reaching goals, working toward them, people come into the picture. Everyone has an opinion, some good, some bad, some have hidden agendas, always bad if they ‘need’ to be hidden, many have self-interests, bad, all the way, a lot lack vision or a holistic overview which prevents them to think toward a solid decision… and…there is always that ‘hierarchical’ issue, where ‘a’ manager/supervisor or equal ‘office’ decides no matter what… in short, it’s a mess.
So bypassing that mess but preserving the good things, and reaching those goals plus, I gazed at those 8 categories again too… looks like technology could bail us out.
When we work towards goals, we make decisions. Any decision adding up to a new situation after, is made by people, in general, one person takes the final decision or is the final ‘responsible’ …there lays the trap… in the fact that ‘A’ person or group of persons decide (and suppose that decision has bad judgement, self-interest or hidden agenda written all over it) and that no one or very few after that can interfere even if it would be for the better. Let’s change that.
Any person in an organization should be able to send out a heads up about a bad decision, a ‘ping’ as I tend to call it. A n email, maybe even anonymous…In first instance towards the person or group of persons that decided, giving him/then the opportunity to examine the ‘new’ facts presented in that ping and maybe alter the decision. If so, an answer could be send towards the ‘pinger’. If the ‘pinger’ is not satisfied with the answer the real potential comes into action. The ‘pinger’ then sends a second ‘ping’ towards the supervising person/office above the first pinged person. That way you prevent the info to be blocked by an individual with a hidden agenda or with self-interest, or you can force a second opinion with the info you presented… again this could have no influence but also there you can send out a third ‘ping’ towards another level or an internal audit team or the CEO or shareholders/government officials.. up until any level you want.
This looks very much as organized whistleblowing, and maybe it is… and it would be for the better if well designed and implemented.
With the right set of values and mindset, this tool could make sure that decisions are fine-tuned when extra info is entered into the system and self-interest or a hidden agenda would be hard to push through if anyone would notice it. Simultaneous this system could track contributions/ bad behavior/trends, and enables everybody to participate in the decision process.
In the beginning this tool probably could be seen as a menace, but I see it as only a menace for people with ‘bad’ intentions… I for one would like my ideas to be tuned if I forgot info to take into account when shaping a decision. I also would like the idea I could stop anyone if I see or know of any malicious conduct…
In fact it attack almost all categories we selected as ‘post-bureaucratic hacks’

Serve peers & customers = possible
Break up monolithical structures = prevent them to block any input for sure
Give everyone a place at the table = in the DNA of the tool
Employee autonomy = yes, tool is well designed
Create meritocracies based on contributions = yes
Acces to realtime info = yes
Shared sense of purpose and community = hell yeah
Ditch formality = at least prevent it to entirely block input

So actually, this tool would enable the organization to … ‘ping-till-perfect’ …