Mopsos

I read somewhere yesterday (can't remember where) that "the purpose of IT is to eliminate bureaucracy".

Wrong. IT merely increases the productivity of bureaucracy. The only thing that eliminates bureaucracy is trust. A real paperless organization is not one that uses electronic files instead of paper, but one who does not need to keep track of everything it does.

Back in the early 80's I used to work for a company where we only kept track of what our customers wanted us to. There were no ass-covering internal memos, because we all felt that we belonged to the same family.

The acid test to recognize creeping bureaucracy is to answer no to Prof. Robert Sutton's key question: "What happens when people fail?"

Excellent.

Although it's obvious to me that bureaucratic organizations don't tolerate/encourage failure, what would a typical bureaucratic answer be to that question?

Just curious.

Posted by: llbswoop at October 30, 2003 02:41 AM

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