Bureaucracy Pro and Con

The quality of leadership in any group depends an awful lot on the size and structure of the group itself. There's one kind of group, in fact, that almost seems to defy any attempt at creative leadership, and you'll hear people in government, business, education, and virtually everywhere else complain about it. It's the large, formal organization tangled in rules, regulation, and red tape. We usually call it bureaucracy

Bureaucracy is really just a fancy name for an organization so large and so specialized that it can only operate by maintaining clearly defined roles and written rules to govern all activities. The modern world does much of its work through such organizations, and without them many of the material benefits of life would be impossible. Yet they do present serious obstacles to leadership and creative innovation.

Ironically, bureaucracies have contributed to a more rapid pace of change in the modern world, but they are so large and cumbersome that they don't adapt well to change themselves. Also ironically, bureaucracies are the result of the human ability to communicate and store information in writing and other symbolic forms -- yet they also limit communication by eliminating much of the face-to-face interaction which helps people to really understand each other.

Since people can easily be treated as replaceable parts in a large bureaucracy, it can also be hard to motivate them to perform beyond minimal expectations or to take risks beyond the written rules and regulations. One of the most effective ways to make bureaucracies more responsive is to work on building small, effective teams within the organization and give each team a clear set of goals and expectations.

Individuals can't do much alone and massive bureaucracies tend to strangle in their own red tape, but small, close-knit teams communicating directly and personally can be creative and can act as flexible links between individuals and the organization as a whole. Small teams can also support a culture of collaboration between and among individuals, other teams, and the organization as a whole.