How to Banish Bureaucracy

Reducing or Banishing Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy: How to Eliminate or
Banish it
What follows is written for readers who are part of a mature bureaucratic organization that wants to eliminate or banish bureaucracy. This chapter aims to introduce the process and give you an overview so you can see past the detailed steps and understand the overall concept.
Each organization is different. Each must find its own way through the process. Each will have a different goal. Each will have a different sense of commitment. Each will have a different culture. Each will have different barriers and different advantages.
Hundreds of organizations attempting to transform themselves in one way or another offer the following observations that are gained from the hard won experience;
• Be aware that your goal has to be more than just to de-bureaucratize. Your goal is to replace bureaucracy with a more desirable state. So, the change process will be to move "toward" something better, rather than to "get rid of" the existing state. You de-bureaucratize as a by-product of achieving "quality" or "extraordinary service" or some other customer-focused goal.
• You fool yourself if you think you can reduce bureaucracy by substituting one in-focused set of goals for another in-focused set of goals. In other words, you don’t de-bureaucratize by mounting a campaign for better profits, or lower costs, or higher dividends. These are examples of the kinds of goals that led your organization to becoming bureaucratic in the first place.
• Senior management commitment is the key determinant of success. If you have it, and can maintain it for long enough, your change effort can succeed. If you only have a little commitment, or if you lose the commitment you have, you’ll be likely to quickly revert back to the present state.
• If your senior management team is clear in its understanding of what is required, and it has a strong commitment, it can choose an ambitious goal and achieve it. If senior...