The bureaucracy for the bureaucracy is very-crazy!

Bureaucracy has been defined as the combined organizational structure, procedures, protocols, and set of regulations in place to manage  activity, usually in large organizations. It is often represented by standardized procedure (rule-following) that guides the execution of most or all processes within the body; formal division of powers; hierarchy; and relationships, intended to anticipate needs and improve efficiency (source: Wikipedia).

Has bureaucracy realized its intentions? Judging from the way the government sector is vilified by its public, the answer is an obvious no. Why so? The government bureaucrats get much obsessed with the rules, regulations, and procedures that they readily lost sight of what they were supposed to do in the first place.  The process becomes more important than the output supposed to be produced.

If bureaucracy is harsh on the public, it is much more so on the government employees themselves. Imagine a bureaucracy for the bureaucracy. It is very-crazy.
(images from http://www.powayusd.com and http://positivesharing.com/)

“Pag gusto may paraan, pag ayaw may dahilan”

The word ‘bureaucratic’ has a negative connotation. I bet Weber did not intend it to be that way. When something with a positive connotation is described as bureaucratic, it becomes an oxymoron. So we have oxymora like “bureaucratic wisdom”, “bureaucratic efficiency”, and “bureaucratic intelligence”.

Just like in basic math, the negative connotation of bureaucracy gives a neutral word a negative connotation when described as such. So “bureaucratic procedure” and “bureaucratic layer” have negative connotations.

But unlike in math, when something with a negative connotation is described as bureaucratic, the double negative does not resolve to a positive connotation. On the contrary, the double negative resolves to a negative. It affirms even more the negative connotation. So we have “bureaucratic mess”, “bureaucratic idiocy”, and “bureaucratic snafu”, which brings to mind a terrible mess, tremendous stupidity, and monumental foul-up .

Bureaucracy is characterized by the system of control based on rational rules--that is, as Weber nobly thought, rules meant to design and regulate the whole organization on the basis of technical knowledge and with the aim of achieving maximum efficiency.

But why has the bureaucracy come to this negative connotation? First let us understand how bureaucracy works. Bureaucracy works like this – if you are given a job/task, get an assistant to delegate that task to. If there is no assistant or deputy at the moment, create one or better yet a task force to study how to give you one. The bureaucracy grew leaps and bounds because of this.

With the increasing complexity and bureaucratization due to insatiable appetite for expansion of the workforce, all power is concentrated at the top, in the hands of an organizational elite. The organizational elite always has as its primary aim the consolidation of its own power position. Whenever this aim clashes with other goals of the workforce, the elite will sacrifice the others rather than jeopardize its own privileges. Kaya uso ang laglagan, at kaya hindi nagkakamali ang boss.Organizational elites have a common interest – maintain the status quo, thus they form a strong power group determined to oppose any demand for change.

Sociologists observe that while Weber thought that rules and control of all actions would mean reliability and predictability, the rules and control also lead to lack of flexibility and the tendency to turn means into ends. The emphasis on conformity and strict observance of the rules induces the one to internalize them. Instead of simply means, procedural rules become ends in themselves. The goal becomes the adherence to rules. The instrumental and formalistic aspect of the bureaucratic role becomes more important than the substantive one, the achievement of the main organizational goals. The predictability and precision envisioned by Weber becomes dysfunction.

A government corporation I am very familiar with is led by an Administrator. The Administrator has two deputies. They also have four assistant administrators; the first three administrators handle the three main functions of the agency: licensing, technical services, and marketing. The fourth assistant administrator handles corporate administration. This means the bureaucracy grew so large that it now needs a full time assistant administrator to handle it alongside the core business functions. Another example is the government financial institution tasked with policy creation and supervision of institutions. It has two deputies to the top boss; one deputy for policy and another for supervision. But wait, there’s more. It has another deputy, again for corporate resources.

Organizational elites are primarily interested in the pursuit of their narrow interests and the consolidation and improvement of their own power position, even at the expense of wider organizational interests. There is a saying: “Pag gusto may paraan, pag ayaw may dahilan”. Organizational elites can manipulate the rules in order to enhance its own prerogatives. Because rules obviously can never cover everything, "areas of uncertainty" always emerge that constitute the focal points around which collective conflicts become acute and instances of direct dominance and subordination develop. The group that, by its position in the occupational structure, can control the "unregulated" area, has a great strategic advantage that it naturally uses in order to improve its power position and to ensure a greater share of organizational rewards. (some material from the Encyclopedia Brittanica).

Work hard at working smart

A former boss, to whom I was not popular, often said (not to me) 'work smart, not hard'. Maybe it is just the only thing we agree about.

Many workers work hard, very hard. Not only work hard, but work hard for long hours. Never mind if mindless chatter intersperse the hours. Aside from chatter, many workers often work hard because they do not know exactly what they are doing, or the best way to do it, hence the inability to respond to the tasks accordingly. Some equate long hours with working hard. Of course, putting in long hours is hard work. Mahirap yun ha? However, if one has the option of working hard or smart, which would he rather do?

I've been working most of my life now. Majority of the working years were spent in government. One general problem in the bureaucracy is the tendency of management to equate long hours with working hard. In local labor lingo, the government bureaucracy works 'arawan', per day. Private business on the other hand, work 'pakyawan'. The irony there is whenever bureaucrats were to have something fixed in their house or car, for example, they invariably would want 'pakyaw' job orders.

Those coming from the private sector would find work in the layered bureaucracy sluggish, tedious and circuitous. The bureaucratic process trumps efficiency. Productivity is still unquestionably the desired outcome but efficiency is neglected. The bureaucracy will complete a job in 2 months if it can be completed in 2 weeks. That is the law of government planning. For example, the government projects an activity can be completed in X days, the government will then make plans and targets to complete the activity in X weeks, and then actually finish it in X months. Same X, longer unit. So, the next time you hear of a government output delivered in 3 months, more likely it was planned to be completed in 3 weeks, and could actually have been completed in 3 days.

A CEO blogs that the basic rule for success is responsiveness. This morning at the flag ceremony, our big boss talked of further improving our work. For starters, the government should start the crackdown on unresponsive units. It is time to get the bureaucracy out of its inertia.

Inertia not initiative prevails in bureaucracy

This quotes Bob Nelson, author of the best-selling book, 1001 Ways to Take Initiative at Work, ISBN: 076111405X

[start of quote]
"Taking the initiative" can mean many things--tapping inner creativity, tackling a persistent problem, capitalizing on opportunities, or creating ways to improve customer services or current work environment. By taking initiative in any of these ways, employees can elevate their visibility in the organization and greatly enhance their chances for recognition, learning, advancement, pay raises and bonuses, as well as have a more meaningful and exciting time at work.

Here are some ways any employee can take greater initiative in his or her job, voiced in a way that you could give directly to your employees or managers. It's one thing to tell your employees to take greater initiative, but another to provide them with easy and clear ways to do it.

Ways To Take More Initiative In Your Job

Thinking Outside the Box: Innovation--thinking outside the box--is the spark that keeps organizations moving ever onward and upward. To think outside the box, look for new combinations, ask "what if" or develop "what-if" scenarios, consider approaches you've never considered before, brainstorm with others, and be a champion of new ideas.

Doing Your Homework: Preparation is often the key to success in any endeavor. You will be more successful in convincing others that what you believe is the right thing, if you are armed and ready with the facts. Taking the initiative to do your homework means doing the basic research necessary to back up your claims, such as obtaining necessary information, determining costs and benefits, making calculations, and/or gaining buy-in from others who will be affected.

Taking Action--Capitalizing on Opportunities: Taking action can often be a scary proposition. It would be much easier to wait for your boss to make the decision and take the responsibility to tell you what to do and when to do it. However, progressive companies realize that they need employees at all levels who are willing and encouraged to take chances and to make decisions--and be willing to take responsibility for their actions.

Making Improvements: One of the easiest--and most effective--ways for employees to take initiative is to be on the lookout for ways to improve the work processes, products, services, and systems that are a vital part of how the organization does its business. In fact, the closer you are to an organization's actual product, the greater the chance is that you have more daily contact with its real business--its customers, clients, products, and services--than do those who are higher up the ladder.

Perseverance and Persistence: Employees who excel at taking initiative usually must also persist in the support of the ideas and actions in which they believe. This type of initiative can, at times, include overcoming the resistance of higher-ups or of entrenched policies and systems that work to ensure the maintenance of the status quo. It often takes a certain degree of courage to take initiative in the first place. But to persist--even over the objections of your manager or others--takes even more commitment and courage.

Taking initiative can be as simple as asking "what if." So, the next time you're doing a routine task, remember that it's the person who does the job who is in the best position to know how to do the job better--whether this improvement means identifying new ways to cut costs, how to make improvements to the way products are developed in your company, how a process might be streamlined, or how to enhance the level of services your customer receives.
[end quote]

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More from the book:

"All progress is made in defiance of management." - Bob Woodward, Reporter, The Washington Post

"New ideas... are not born in a conforming environment." - Roger von Oech, President, Creative Think, Inc.

"Be Proactive, Not reactive.... Asking for forgiveness is easier than asking for permission. If you know what needs to be done, do it now and explain yourself later."

"Our people...are responsible for their own product and its quality. We expect them to act like owners." - Gordon Forward, President, Chaparral Steel

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"The four cornerstones of character on which the structure of this nation was built are: Initiative, Imagination, Individuality and Independence."  - American war hero Eddie Riclenbacker. Do we have those to rebuild this nation? Ever wondered why despite all the new idealistic graduates that enter the Philippine bureaucracy each year, the bureaucracy remains the way it is - sluggish, bloated, stagnant, so full of itself? It is because the well entrenched bureaucracy does not understand what initiative is as pointed out by Nelson. The bureaucracy is too mindful of itself defending the status quo. To them the only initiative that matters is the initiative that preserves the present order. Inertia prevails. I call it INERTIATIVE - the readiness to preserve the current comfort level.

The fresh graduates brimming with idealism are slowly gnawed up by the system. They mature into zombies themselves gobbling up succeeding idealists that come. It is a vicious spiraling cycle with no end in sight unless we start to care and be heroes.

Bureaucracy: Red Tape and Other Negative By-products

This post is lifted entirely from Busting Bureaucracy, a website that attempts to eliminate the crushing, demoralizing and innovation-sapping torments of too much bureaucracy. I'll add  experiences recounted to me by some friends in future posts.

Bureaucracy: Red Tape and Other Negative By-products
Inside the organization, employees live with the red tape and some very negative by-products of the bureaucratic form.

When employees are asked to give examples of things they think of as being bureaucratic, they frequently cite the following:
• Each department has its own agenda, and departments don’t cooperate to help other departments get the job done.
• The head of a department feels responsible first for protecting the department, its people and its budget, even before helping to achieve the organization’s mission.
• There is political in-fighting, with executives striving for personal advancement and power.
• Ideas can be killed because they come from the "wrong" person. Ideas will be supported because the are advanced by the "right" person.
• People in their own department spend much of their time protecting their department’s "turf."
• People in other departments spend so much time protecting their "turf" that they don’t have time to do the work they are responsible to do.
• They are treated as though they can’t be trusted.
• They are treated as though they don’t have good judgment.
• They are treated as though they won’t work hard unless pushed.
• Their work environment includes large amounts of unhealthy stress.
• The tendency of the organization is to grow top-heavy, while the operating units of the organization tend to be too lean.
• Promotions are more likely to be made on the basis of politics, rather than actual achievements on the job.
• Top managers are dangerously ill-informed and insulated from what is happening on the front lines or in "the field."
• Information is hoarded or kept secret and used as the basis for power.
• Data is used selectively, or distorted to make performance look better than it really is.
• Internal communications to employees are distorted to reflect what the organization would like to be, rather than what it really is.
• Mistakes and failures are denied, covered up or ignored.
• Responsibility for mistakes and failure tends to be denied, and where possible, blame is shifted to others.
• Decisions are made by larger and larger groups, so no one can be held accountable.
• Decisions are made based on the perceived desires of superiors, rather than concern for mission achievement.
• Policies, practices and procedures tend to grow endlessly and to be followed more and more rigidly.
• Senior managers become so insulated from the realities of the front line that they may use stereotypical thinking and out-of-date experience in making decisions.
• Quantitative measurements are favored over qualitative measurements, so the concentration is on quantities of output, with less and less concern for quality of output.
• Both employees and customers are treated more as numbers than people. Personal issues and human needs are ignored or discounted.

The Ten Most Hated Jobs

A recent article at CNBC draws on a survey of hundreds of thousands of employees which determined the 10 most hated jobs. Despite the hard job put in by teachers and nurses, it may be surprising that they didn’t make the list. The jobs in the list are not the low level jobs. The survey found that limited growth opportunities and lack of reward caused more dissatisfaction than the low pay, long hours, and thankless tasks.

The pain then, is psychological. It’s the lack of direction and meaning in what they do that is the problem. People know that they are capable of contributing more but the hierarchical bureaucracy prevents them from doing it.

The Ten Most Hated Jobs:

1. Director of Information Technology 
2. Director of Sales and Marketing 
3. Product Manager 
4. Senior Web Developer 
5. Technical Specialist 
6. Electronics Technician 
7. Law Clerk 
8. Technical Support Analyst 
9. CNC (computer numerical control machines, e.g., lathes) Machinist 
10. Marketing Manager

I know a friend who though not from an IT department, performs IT tasks for his group. He can claim to perform four (maybe more) of the jobs listed above. He must hate his job, I thought. When asked about it, he said the respect of his peers and co-workers keep him going. The top heavy bureaucracy bears down on the staff and only the deep camaraderie and the common desire to contribute make the employees function. Wow, their director of IT must be hating his/her job more, I assumed. On the contrary, my friend says the managers love their jobs as much as the staff hate them. The clueless supervisors/managers can go on leave full time and it won't make a difference. My friend hopes they give it a try.

White Hair Chronicles VIII - Ganito kami noon, ganito pa rin ngayon?

This week marks the 37th year of imposition of martial law. I was a frail, skinny kid then in a public elementary school and this weekend I will be meeting again with some classmates from those days, some I have not seen in 35 years. They will find me still frail and skinny and still a kid at heart.

I remember waking up and being told that were no classes that day, September 23, 1972, a Friday I think. We were not allowed to go out and check with our schoolmates/ neighbors. The streets were deserted anyway. No one knew what was going on. There were bombings and rallies going on the past weeks. Talks were rife that classes will be suspended until the end of the schoolyear. We were initially overjoyed but got immediately terrified when told that we may have to repeat the grade when school reopens.

The TV channels were cut off. When Marcos appeared on-screen with his "I hereby declare" speech, people confirmed what was whispered in hush-hush tones. After which, only one channel operated and all it showed was Maribeth Bichara gyrating in skimpy clothes, alternating with Sahlee Quizon and Sonny Cortez singing something about sugar.

I'm sure my classmates can fill up my fading memories of how things were. These days we also have insurgency, bombings, journalists/activists missing/getting killed, corruption, military in the bureaucracy, poverty, efforts to change the charter, and more recently spying on the academe. Jun Cruz Reyes was my Filipino literature instructor in high school while Bien Lumbera was my professor in Pilipino 41 (an elective course - Critical Thinking) in college.

Alex Magno refuses to see the parallels between the situation then and now. But Winnie Monsod believes we are still haunted by Marcos' martial law, enumerating the problems that hound us up to this day.

While Alex Magno insists that dictatorship is impossible at this time, it is not dictatorship per se that bothers us. It is the damage being done to the institutions just to perpetuate oneself in power. It is to that that we say never again.

IT's Kafkaesque

Have you experienced the crushing weight of bureaucracy?

In Kafka's novel, 'The Trial', made into a movie in 1962, a parable is told - 'bureaucrats, the system of administration and its power crush the individual. The individual becomes a choking victim of society when by chance - or misfortune - he is drawn towards the gear of its system.'

Here's Kafka's parable "Before the Law" (stills and text from the Orson Welles movie 'The Trial')

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Before the law there stands a guard. A man comes from the country, begging admittance to the law. But the guard cannot admit him.

"Can he hope to enter at a later time?"

"That is possible," says the guard.

The man tries to peer through the entrance. "He had been taught that the law should be accessible to every man."

"Do not attempt to enter without my permission," says the guard. "I am very powerful, yet I am the least of all the guards. From hall to hall, door after door, each guard is more powerful than the last."

By the guard's permission, the man sits down by the side of the door and there he waits.

For years he waits.

Everything he has, he gives away in the hope of bribing the guard, who never fails to say to him, "I take what you give me only so you will not feel you have left something undone."

Keeping his watch during the long years, the man has learned to know even the fleas in the guard's fur collar. And, growing childish in old age, he begs the very fleas to persuade the guard to change his mind and allow him to enter.

His sight is dimmed, but in the darkness he perceives a radiance streaming from the door of the law.

And now, before he dies, all his experience condenses into one question, a question he has never asked.

He beckons to the guard. Says the guard, "You are insatiable! What is it now?"

Says the man, "Every man strives to attain the law. How is it then that in all these years no one else has ever come here seeking admittance?"

His hearing has failed so the guard yells into his ear. "No one else but you could ever have obtained admittance. No one else could enter this door. This door was intended only for you."

"And now I am going to close it."

Facebook and Twitter in the PNoy government

With his presidential campaign successfully fueled by social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, PNoy will now try to tap those tools in his good governance campaigns. The first government unit to try to use them was the Supreme Court. It was also the first to deactivate its use. The Supreme Court is not giving up though on Twitter. It says it's still tweaking its account.

The Department of Finance today announced it will soon launch its own social media accounts. The department hopes to receive from the public some leads in its anti-tax evasion and smuggling campaigns.

These departments are definitely not the first to use social networking media to reach out to the public. It has been tried before but the rigid bureaucracy nipped it in the bud. Mid level bureaucrats are unable to explain to their superiors the utility of the social media in disseminating information although many of them use them personally. It is only now in PNoy's time, with new blood being infused in the top, that social media gets a second look. With the mid level bureaucrats' Malabanan mentality, expect many to suddenly like those tools now and suggest their use to management.

Didn't they know resistance is futile?

Just do it.

The passivity and incompetence in Philippine bureaucracy can be partly traced to its segurista attitude. The tendency of upper management to be aristocratic and dictatorial together with their underlings' sipsip ways (unhealthy managing up) likewise lead to the lethargy. Many are unwilling to take initiative outside of what upper management hints, wary of their bosses' capacity to hold grudges.

So risk-aversion is ever the order of the day. Maybe the workforce should revisit the Grace Hopper quotations "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission" and "A ship in a harbor is safe, but that is not what a ship is built for."

We need to remember that "winners take imperfect action while losers are still perfecting the plan" (Gina Graves).  Or as the commercial says "Just do it".

The SNAFU Principle

Ever wonder why the bureaucracy always fouls up everything. Here's an explanation floating on the web.

The SNAFU Principle

In the beginning was the Plan.

And then came the Assumptions.

And the Assumptions were without form.

And the Plan was without substance.

And darkness was upon the face of the Workers. And they spoke among themselves, saying, "It is a crock of shit, and it stinks."

And the Workers went unto their Supervisors and said, "It is a pail of dung, and we can't live with the smell."

And the Supervisors went unto their Managers, saying, "It is a container of excrement, and it is very strong, such that none may abide by it."

And the Managers went unto their Directors, saying, "It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide its strength."

And the Directors spoke among themselves, saying to one another, "It contains that which aids plant growth, and it is very strong."

And the Directors went to the Vice Presidents, saying unto them, "It promotes growth, and it is very powerful."

And the Vice Presidents went to the President, saying unto him, "This new plan will actively promote the growth and vigor of the company with very powerful effects."

And the President looked upon the Plan and saw that it was good.

And the Plan became Policy.

And this is how shit happens.