I once read a blurb about the benefits of bureaucracy, and how it is intended to resist political influences, autocratic leadership, priority-of-the-day decision-making, silo'ed views, and more things that we generally see as "Bad Things^™️". I'm sad that I can't recall where it was, but its message was similar as what The Benefits Of Bureaucracy: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Red Tape by Rita McGrath presents. When I read it, I was strangely supportive to the message, because I am very much confronted, and perhaps also often the cause, for bureaucracy and governance-related deliverables in the company that I work for.

Bureacracy and (hyper)governance

Bureaucracy, or governance in general, often puts a bad taste in the mouth of whomever dares to speak about it though. And I fully agree, hypergovernance or hyperbureaucracy will put too much burden in the organization. The benefits will no longer be visible, and the creativity and innovation of people will be stifled.

Hypergovernance is a bad thing indeed, and often comes up in the news. Companies loathing the so-called overregulation of the European Union for instance, getting together in action groups to ask for deregulation. A recent topic here was Europe's attempt for moving towards a more sustainable environment given the lack of attention on sustainability by the various industries and governments. The premise to regulate this was driven by the observation that principally guiding and asking doesn't work: sustainability is a long-term goal, yet most industries and governments focus on short-term benefits.

The need to simplify regulation, and the reaction on the bureacracy needed to align with the reporting expectations of Europe, triggered the update by the European Commission in a simplification package it calls the Omnibus package.

I think that is the right way forward, not for this particular case (I don't know enough about ESG to be any useful resource on that), but also within regulated industries and companies where the bureaucracy is considered to dampen progression and efficiency. Simplification and optimization here is key, not just running down things. In the Capability Maturity Model, a process is considered efficient if it includes deliberate process optimization and improvement. So why not deliberately optimize and improve? Evaluate and steer?

Benefits of bureaucracy

It would be bad if bureaucracy itself would be considered a negative point of any organization. Many of the benefits of bureaucracy I fully endorse myself.

Standardization, where procedures and policies are created to ensure consistency in operations and decision-making. Without standardization, you gain inefficiencies, not benefits. If a process is considered too daunting, standardization might be key to improve on it.

Accountability, where it is made clear who does what. Holding people or teams accountable is not a judgement, but a balance of expectations and responsibilities. If handled positively, accountability is also an expression of expertise, endorsement for what you are or can do.

Risk management, which is coincidentally the most active one in my domain (the Digital Operational Resilience Act has a very strong focus on risk management), has a primary focus on reducing the likelihood of misconduct and errors. Regulatory requirements and internal controls are not the goal, but a method.

Efficiency, by streamlining processes through established protocols and procedures. Sure, new approaches and things come along, but after the two-hundredth request to do or set up something only to realize it still takes 50 mandays... well, perhaps you should focus on streamlining the process, introduce some bureaucracy to help yourself out.

Transparency, promoting clear communication and documentation, as well as insights into why something is done. This improves trust among the teams and people.

In a world where despotic leadership exists, you will find that a good working bureacracy can be a inhibitor for too aggressive change. That can frustrate the wanna-be autocrat (if they are truly autocrat, then there is no bureacracy), but with the right support, it can indicate and motivate why this resistance exists. If the change is for the good - well, bureaucracy even has procedures for change.

Bureaucracy also prohibits islands and isolated decision making. People demanding all the budgets for themselves because they find that their ideas are the only ones worth working on (everybody has these in the company) will also find that the bureacracy is there to balance budgeting, allocate resources to the right projects that benefit the company as a whole, and not just the 4 people you just onboarded in your team and gave macbooks...

Bureaucracy isn't bad, and some people prefer to have strict rules or procedures. Resisting change is a human behavior, but promoting anarchy is also not the way forward. Instead, nurture a culture of continuous improvement: be able to point out when things go beyond their reach, and learn about the reasoning and motivation that others bring up. Those in favor of bureacracy will see this as a maturity increase, and those that are affected by over-regulation will see this as an improvement.

We can all strive to remain in a bureaucracy and be happy with it.

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