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.

Formal power is the currency of bureaucracy; it is the prize for which the game is played. Bureaucracy inflames our natural desire for power, sometimes to the point of caricature. As a result, bureaucracy often brings out the worst in people, whether it’s a minor functionary gleefully enforcing a petty rule, or a CEO getting an ego massage from a deferential underling. In other words, bureaucracy isn’t simply an organizational problem—it’s a human problem.

Bureaucratic Mass Index Survey Questions:

1. How many layers are there in your organization (from frontline employees up to the CEO, president, or managing director)?

1. What percentage of your time do you spend on “bureaucratic chores” (e.g., preparing reports, securing sign-offs, complying with staff requests, and participating in review meetings)?

1. How much does bureaucracy slow decision making and action in your organization?

1. To what extent are your interactions with your manager and other leaders focused on internal issues (e.g., resolving dispute, securing resources, getting approvals)?

1. How much autonomy do frontline teams have to design their work, solve problems, and test new ideas?

1. How often are frontline teams members involved in the design and development of change initiatives?

1. How do people in your organization react to unconventional ideas?

1. In general, how easy is it for an employee to launch a new project that requires a small team and a bit of seed funding?

1. How prevalent are political behaviours in your organization?

1. How often do political skills, as opposed to demonstrated competence, influence who gets ahead in your organization?

Before moving on, let’s recap:

• Bureaucracies are replication machines. They’re designed for exploit, not explore.

• Bureaucracies tend to be monocultures. They’re run by individuals temperamentally inclined to favor the status quo.

• Bureaucratic information systems fail to capture the hidden costs of one-sided trade-offs. As a result, many decisions are underinformed and, therefore, suboptimal.

• Bureaucracies tend to enforce uniform trade-offs across the entire organization. Though unsophisticated, this preserves the center’s power and sense of order.

• The bureaucratic aversion to ambiguity leads to either/or thinking. Rather than maintaining a creative tension, organizations tend to whipsaw between counterposed priorities.

Administrative Burden by Pamela Herd and Donald Moynihan digs deeper into the problems of bad government bureaucracy, paperwork, and convoluted regulations.