Comments on: Red Tape Inspiration: Tips for Beating the Bureaucracy Blues

By: Simone

Simone — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 10:24:31 +0000

Hi Reasonable Robinson,
Thanks for spicing up the conversation with your thoughtful comments.
I do believe bureaucracy of some sort is required - just not necessarily the flavour I have had to swallow!
I also think ‘value’ and ‘purpose’ are all too clear to those in the know - but not necessarily something the bureaucrats would own up to…
Ultimately, it is about survival and that often means suppressing your individuality for the purpose of a piece of paper - and all it bestows.
Thanks for the visit - and join the smarty-pants queue to the left :)
S.

By: reasonable robinson

reasonable robinson — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 08:44:10 +0000

Hi, it’s interesting that you use ‘re-engineering’ to explain what you sometimes do as an intervention. There is an argument that suggests that this indicates that you are reinforcing the underlying assumption that the organisation is a ‘machine’ (Gareth Morgan)and therefore there is a continuing need for some aspects of bureaucracy, which in turns limits the discussion to what is good/ bad bureaucracy rather than asking ’so we need it at all?’ which in turn influences the types of intervention deemed possible and appropriate :)

There are, as you will know, other ways, the organisation can be conceived such as an organism or a brain, or my favourtite metaphor - psychic prison. Tackling the excesses of bureaucracy in my view means re-thinking and re-languaging the organisation top to tail and having a very clearly articulated understanding of the critcial factors for organisational ’success’in both internal and external terms (whatever they may be). Bureaucracy is a mind crushing, talent destroying, unimgainative corporate disease, and staff/ employees should, in my view, have their critical faculties developed to enact the counter argument at all times (i.e. challenge it and take it on)

I completely agree that the ‘bureaucratic’ mindset is debilitating, primarily because it is ’self -serving’ and devoid the ability to be self critically reflexive concerning the ‘value’ and ‘purpose’ of ‘its’ endevours for’the other person’ Eric Fromm in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness explores the extreme nature of the bureaucratic mind through a discussion of Himmler…well worth a read in this context.

..the computer says no (if you haven’t yet…check out Little Britian…forms can be on the front desk)

By: Simone

Simone — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 23:45:40 +0000

Five years of immigration = five new personality disorders :)
S.

By: Mad goat lady

Mad goat lady — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 22:06:04 +0000

That’s funny…from what I remember about the Immigration Department, stamping feet and yelling will eventually get a response!

Maybe that response is to put your file to the bottom of the pile but it feels good. Immigration can literally send you insane :P