In most contexts, bureaucracy is a bad word, and referring to someone as a bureaucrat is less than complimentary. If bureaucracy is nearly universally held in disdain, why are so many large organizations plagued with it to the detriment of both those who work inside the organization and all who have to deal with the organization? In addition to the frustration most people face working with and within bureaucratic organizations, the all-too-familiar trouble of bureaucracy are one of the greatest barriers to effective work and thus one of the greatest challenges a leader can face. As far back as 1968, Frederick Herzberg observed that the top cause of worker dissatisfaction was company policy and administration. Though a half a century has passed since then, I imagine similar research today would yield similar results. This means that the stifling culture of bureaucracy can negate efforts to motivate people by pay, working conditions, and work-life balance. Therefore, it is essential that leaders to all within their power to solve the bureaucracy problem.

Bureaucracy is Necessary, But its Form is Optional

Even as many organizations try to abandon bureaucracy in favor of a flat organizational structure, the problem remains. The reason that large organizations find it so difficult to escape bureaucracy is that it is actually necessary for them. As far back as the 1841 train wreck I described in my leadership paper, it has been well known and accepted that large organizations need to be actively managed. Whether we like it or not, that requires structure, standardization, established tools, and process control. Small organizations can get by without these things by relying on the knowledge and skills of their people to fully understand their work and the organization, allowing them to flexibly meet customer needs. The complexity of large organizations makes this method impossible, meaning that the people within them need to have standardized processes and tools to help them do their jobs. In other words, managing large organizations requires bureaucracy. Therefore, bureaucracy cannot and should not go away.

Does this mean we are doomed to the frustration we have all come to expect from bureaucratic organizations? If the only options for organizational structure were flat or bureaucratic, we would be. Fortunately, those are not the only options. In The Toyota Way, Jeffrey K. Liker describes four different organizational structures, characterized by low to high technical structure (flat vs. bureaucratic) and low to high social structure. In truth, bureaucracy only describes the technical structure of the organization, not its social structure and culture. While the leader has responsibility for both structure and culture, it is the latter than makes or breaks the organization. Flat organizations can be either organic and empowering or autocratic and stifling in their culture. Similarly, bureaucratic organizations can either be coercive or enabling in their culture. He goes on to describe Toyota as an enabling bureaucracy. Conversely, most bureaucracies we deal with fall into the coercive category, meaning that when we refer to bureaucracy we have that in mind. Toyota understood that bureaucracy was necessary but also understood that it could be implemented in a way that actually empowered people and helped them do a better job. Liker explains:

Coercive bureaucracy “uses standards to control people…and punish them to get them back in line….By contrast, enabling systems are simply the best practice methods, designed and improved upon with the participation of the work force.  The standards actually help people control their own work”.

-Jeffrey K. Liker, The Toyota Way, 2004, 145

This means that the problem of bureaucracy can be solved by ensuring that the structure, standardization, processes, and tools are all designed to help people do a better job with less effort and ever-increasing pride of workmanship (as W. Edwards Deming would say).

Enabling Bureaucracy: Applying Servant Leadership

Essentially, replacing coercive bureaucracy with enabling bureaucracy requires applying servant leadership to the structure of the organization. In any type of service, the object of that service is the focus (not the servant). So in servant leadership, the focus of leadership is to serve the people being led, not the leader. A servant leader exists to care for those being led and to enable them to do their jobs better and with less effort. This is the start of enabling bureaucracy. Transforming any coercive bureaucracy to an enabling bureaucracy will be complex and multi-faceted, but there are a few key elements that must be present.

Make Processes Work for People

One of the biggest frustrations of coercive bureaucracy is how people are forced to work within processes that often hinder rather than help them in doing their jobs. Therefore, it is essential that processes work for people, not vice versa. None of our organizational processes were divinely received, meaning that they are all fallible and changeable. Processes can and must change in order to best serve the people who must use them. This means first understanding who our customers are and what creates value for them. Then, we must align our processes such that they best help our people to provide that value to our customers.

Trust People as People

It should go without saying that leaders must treat people as people and not machines, but remnants of the Industrial Age mentality still see workers as machines in certain ways. This is especially evident in the fact that most of the rigor in coercive bureaucracy processes is aimed at ensuring compliance rather than helping people do their jobs. Good leaders both instill trust in their people and extend trust to them. While compliance is often important, it is better ensured through proper tools and automation rather than manual verification steps in processes. In addition to being time-consuming, many of these steps rely on the approval of certain people, often leading to long wait times and ever-growing frustration. Instead, approvals need to be at the lowest level possible so that people can actually do their jobs. It is astounding how little trust many organizations often place in those upon whom they place great responsibility. In my career, I have been entrusted with managing multi-million-dollar contracts, ensuring the safety of manned aircraft, and leading hundreds of people. Despite this, I have to justify relatively small expenses when filing a voucher for official travel. Fortunately, my organization has a well-established process, tools that have been steadily improved over the course of my career, and policies that make this much less arduous than it can be in some organizations. In Out of the Crisis, instead of spending so much time approving and auditing such expenses, W. Edwards Deming recommended paying them outright then auditing a sample of them to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse. Manual approval and auditing of all such expenses often creates far more waste than it catches on top of eroding people’s trust. The hiring process and initial probationary period are the appropriate time to determine whether or not workers are trustworthy. After that, workers should be generally trusted unless there is a compelling reason to withhold that trust. Enabling processes reflect that, placing trust in people and thereby improving their morale and effectiveness.

Cut the Waste

In addition to cutting wasteful steps and improving processes so that people can do their jobs better and with less effort, entire processes should be eliminated if they are wasteful. Any process that does not help the organization accomplish its broader purpose is wasteful. This means that cutting wasteful processes requires understanding who the organization’s customers are and what value the organization provides to them. Everything done within the organization must be done to accomplish that end. This produces three types of processes:

• Value-added: This includes whatever creates value for the customer as well as anything that helps the workers to create value for the customer. Since better workers serve the customer better, processes to train and care for workers are also value-added. In enabling bureaucracy, the percentage of time workers spend on these processes must be maximized in order to maximize both short and long-term value for the customer (and thus value for the organization).
• Non-value added, necessary: These are processes required to meet external requirements such as statutes and regulations. These must be done, but the time spent on them must be minimized so that workers can focus on creating value for the customer.
• Non-value added, unnecessary: These processes do not create value for the customer and are not necessary to meet external requirements. They can and should be zealously eliminated.

No Red Beads

Ultimately, an enabling bureaucracy is the opposite of Deming’s famous Red Bead Experiment, which he demonstrates here. This demonstration involved willing workers forced to follow a rigid process that was woefully defective who were then chastised for not meeting quality goals that were impossible. Halfway through, the worst performing workers are laid off, forcing the remaining workers to do double the work until the company eventually folds due to poor quality. In addition to showing how slogans, quotas, arbitrary quality targets, and merit rating have a detrimental effect on both morale and performance, the Red Bead Experiment vividly portrays the fallacy and toxicity of rigid processes against which people are judged and punished but which they have no ability to influence or improve. Since the process is rigid and produces defects, its results are independent of the individual workers, producing frustration in them for their failure to meet the arbitrary quality standard which is exacerbated when they are chastised for it, as they have no control over their own performance. The fictitious company is also lulled into a false sense of security by the existence of a quality program in the form of two quality inspectors and a chief inspector, but they merely identify the quality defects rather than improve the process to eliminate them. Deming was adamant that quality could not be inspected into a product but must be built into the process that produces it, so no amount of inspectors will improve quality if the process is not improved. Ultimately, the plurality of inspectors is the only redeeming aspect of the fictitious company in the demonstration, so transforming a coercive bureaucracy into an enabling bureaucracy requires looking for ways in which the organization is exhibiting the same practices as the Red Bead Experiment and then working to fix those areas. The Red Bead Experiment makes obvious what is often subtle within the organization, so good leaders look for faint signs of it within the organization.

Clearly, much more can be said about transforming coercive bureaucracies into enabling bureaucracies, but these factors will suffice for now. In the future, I plan to write more specifically about how to improve administrative processes that often form the lion’s share of coercive and wasteful processes within organizations. Ultimately, good leaders serve their people. In a bureaucratic organization, that means establishing, maintaining, and constantly improving the processes, tools, and policies so that workers can do a better job with less effort to ultimately serve the customers better. If the majority of bureaucratic organizations did this, then bureaucracy would cease to be a bad word.