Bureaucratic organizations are inertial, incremental, and dispiriting. In a bureaucracy, the power to initiate change is vested in a few senior leaders. When those at the top fall prey to denial, arrogance, and nostalgia, as they often do, the organization falters. That’s why deep change in a bureaucracy is usually belated and convulsive. Bureaucracies are also innovation-phobic. They are congenitally risk averse, and offer few incentives to those inclined to challenge the status quo. In a bureaucracy, being a maverick is a high-risk occupation. Worst of all, bureaucracies are soul crushing. Deprived of any real influence, employees disconnect emotionally from work. Initiative, creativity, and daring—requisites for success in the creative economy—often get left at home.

Second, the structures and rituals of bureaucracy constitute a set of social norms which, like all norms, are difficult to challenge without looking like a buffoon. Suggest abolishing the trappings of bureaucracy— the multiple management layers and all-powerful staff groups—and your colleagues will scoff at your naivete. What’s next? Letting people design their own jobs, choose their colleagues, and approve their own expenses? Well, yes, actually, but if you go there, heads will explode.

Fourth, bureaucrats are inclined to defend the status quo. Bureaucracy is a massive, multiplayer game in which millions of human beings compete for the prize of promotion. These are zero-sum battles. To advance, you must master the art of ducking blame, defending turf, managing up, hoarding resources, trading favors, negotiating targets, and escaping scrutiny. Anyone who’s spent years honing these skills is unlikely to be enthusiastic about a radical rule change.

Bureaucracy, as we’ve noted, is a game. It pits contestants against one another in a battle for positional power and the rewards that come with it. We have no problem with competition—unless winning comes at the cost of one’s humanity. Bureaucracy will start to crumble when talented and principled people walk off the playing field; when big-hearted heretics decide to forgo bureaucratic wins for the sake of their own integrity, and for the sake of those who’ve been diminished by bureaucracy. As Harvard professor Marshall Ganz notes, the goal of people who change the world is “not winning the game, but changing the rules.

Here’s a simple exercise you can do. Reflect on your actions across the last week or month and ask:

1. DID I SUBTLY UNDERMINE A RIVAL? In a bureaucracy, power is zero-sum. When a slot opens up, only one person gets promoted. In the battle to move ahead, it’s tempting to discount the contributions of others, or sow doubts about their integrity or competence.

1. DID I HOLD ON TO POWER WHEN I SHOULD HAVE SHARED IT? In a formal hierarchy, it’s the people who make the big decisions who get paid the big bucks. To justify their superior status, managers must be seen to be making the tough calls. This creates a disincentive to share authority.

1. DID I PAD A BUDGET REQUEST OR EXAGGERATE A BUSINESS CASE? Resource allocation in a bureaucracy is inflexible and conservative. Budgets often get set a year in advance, and anything that looks risky gets down-rated. Given this, it’s tempting to bid for more resources than you need or overstate the merits of your case.

1. DID I FAKE ENTHUSIASM FOR ONE OF MY BOSS’S IDEAS? In a bureaucracy, disagreeing with your boss can be a career-limiting move. Hence, individuals often swallow their reservations rather than risk being seen as disloyal.

5. DID I DISREGARD THE HUMAN COSTS OF A DECISION? If your organization treats people as mere resources, you may be pushed to make decisions that sacrifice trust and relational capital for short-term business gains.

1. DID I PLAY IT SAFE WHEN I SHOULD HAVE BEEN BOLD? In a bureaucracy, the penalties for screwing up are often bigger than the penalties for sitting on your hands. Given that, it’s tempting to defend timidity as prudence.

1. DID I FAIL TO CHALLENGE A COUNTERPRODUCTIVE POLICY? It’s easier to whine about a stupid rule than to challenge a senior policy maker. Civil disobedience is never the safest choice, but systems don’t change until people take a stand.

1. DID I DO LESS THAN I COULD TO FOSTER THE GROWTH OF THOSE WHO WORK FOR ME? As we noted earlier, there’s often an assumption that “commodity jobs” are filled with “commodity people.” As a result, it’s easy to overlook opportunities to nurture the growth of employees doing mundane jobs.

1. DID I FAIL TO CREATE TIME AND SPACE FOR INNOVATION, OR MISS AN OPPORTUNITY TO BACK A PROMISING IDEA? There’s not much glory in being an innovation mentor. It takes time and often ends in failure. It’s easier to keep your head down than to champion a new idea, but the result is inertia and incrementalism.

1. DID I FAVOR MY TEAM AT THE EXPENSE OF THE BUSINESS OVERALL? Bureaucracies offer few rewards for sharing scarce resources with other units. Behaving parochially often produces the best personal outcomes, even when it’s suboptimal for the organization at large.

1. DID I UNFAIRLY DEFLECT BLAME OR CLAIM CREDIT? In a bureaucracy, performance assessments are typically focused on individuals rather than teams. The goal is to be Teflon when the shit hits the fan and Velcro when plaudits are being handed out. This behavior distorts reputations and misallocates rewards, but it’s the way to win in an individualistic organization.

1. DID I SACRIFICE MY VALUES FOR EXPEDIENCY? Bureaucracies value results above all else. If you exceed your targets, no one’s likely to ask what shortcuts you took. Over time, the bias for outcomes over ethics desensitizes an organization to the moral consequences of its actions.