Bureaucracy Eats Orgs Alive

The Chief Idea Killer.

Bureaucracy is everywhere. I think we all secretly know that and have worked in those types of organizations. We’ve also complained about it on line at the DMV or when dealing with a massive cable company. Bureaucracy, in some ways, defines the United States from an organizational perspective. (The other things that define it? Clueless managers and clueless managers bellowing about how “what’s measured is what matters.”)

From a research perspective, it appears bureaucracy is actually a lot worse — and more common — than we actually thought.

Wait, wasn’t bureaucracy supposed to head in the other direction?

Here’s the amazing place to begin this discussion. Consider these two statements:

• In 1930, Keynes said we’d all be working 15-hour work weeks by 2030. It’s not 2030 yet, but that’s unlikely to happen.
• In 1998, Peter Drucker wrote an article for Harvard Business Review. He claimed that by 2008, an average organization would slash management layers by 50 percent and managerial ranks by 70 percent.

What’s actually happened instead?

Time at work has risen, and we’ve come to deify the workaholic.