Never change a winning game; always change a losing one. Bill Tilden
With over 1.7 million staff on payroll, Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) is one of the world’s largest and most complex organisations. In 2012, Helen Bevan launched a grassroots initiative that became the largest, most successful change initiative in NHS' history, despite being unsanctioned from the top. NHS' Change Day launched in 2013 with the simple idea of inviting any staff across the NHS to pledge a change they could make to improve the patient experience.
On the first change day, more than 160,000 pledges were made across the organisation, growing to over 800,000 in the second year. This bottom-up movement continues to have a positive impact on the patients, staff, and effectiveness of the organisation, demonstrating the power that individuals can have in creating a better environment, regardless of their position.
What is a Bureaucracy?
A bureaucracy technically refers to both a body of non-elected government officials and an administrative policy-making group. The word originated from combining the French word bureau (desk or office) with the Greek word κράτος (kratos) meaning rule or political power.
The first known English-language use dates to 1818 with Irish novelist Lady Morgan
referring to the apparatus used by the British government to subjugate Ireland as "the Bureaucratie, or office tyranny, by which Ireland has so long been governed."
In our modern context, bureaucracy is used disparagingly to describe structures, processes, rules, or policies that exist to serve the organisation, at the expense of staff and customers. Examples include onerous tick-box activities that add little or no value to the business, but 'must' be done in the name of prudence, best practice, or good governance. The benefits of bureaucracy include control, consistency, conformity, and coordination. The side effects can include bloat, busywork, and disingenuous behaviour.
Why should I care?
In a bureaucracy, humans are the instruments (resources) used to produce products and services for the company. The question at the core of bureaucracy is 'How do we get employees to better serve the organisation'? It is a game in which there are few winners and many losers. It's a game that we either choose to play at the cost of our integrity and dignity or refuse to engage at the cost of career advancement and compensation. It doesn't have to be this way. Instead of trying to win this game which has increasingly become a race to the bottom, we should ask what rules would make a better game for everyone.
What is a Humanocracy?
A Humanocracy is a people-centric organisation where the company is the instrument, the malleable material for staff to shape into something that creates value for customers and society, without losing their integrity and dignity. A Humanocracy is about freeing the human spirit at work, cultivating an environment where people are treated with respect, agency, and responsibility, aligned to a clear and compelling purpose. The question at the core of a humanocracy is 'How do we shape our organisation to bring out the best in our people?'
To illustrate the practical differences between the two, the below diagram shows how each of them handles different areas of the business like budgeting, strategy, innovation, hiring, compensation, governance, and decision making. As you look at the qualities of both, reflect on where you think your current organisation sits.
Not convinced? Let's zoom out a little and look at centrally planned vs open market economies and how they relate to how our companies operate.
Most of us have the privilege of operating our organisations in relatively open market economies where limited rules, regulations, and taxes exist to enable free trade, creating a highly decentralised and efficient system that adapts very quickly to changes in supply and demand. As you head to the supermarket to grab a few items, you'll see bananas from the Philippines, coffee from Columbia, desserts from Denmark, eggs from down the road, and fudge from France. This variety of choices exists because of open market principles, voluntary players that trade goods through mutually beneficial contracts. A key pillar of developed societies, open markets have proven their effectiveness over centrally-planned economies, so much so that communist nations such as China have begun to adopt open market principles with incredible results.
Centrally planned economies, by contrast, are a dying breed. In this economic system, decisions around the production and distribution of goods are made by a central authority instead of market players. This system requires a large number of skilled bureaucrats to forecast and plan supply and demand needs for the nation, often going through several rounds of revision before it is submitted to the government or legislature. Once set, the economic plan is very difficult to change and is therefore slow to respond to changing macro conditions.
The below diagram demonstrates the difference between centrally planned economies and open markets in supply and demand, price signals, trade agreements, regulations, and competition. I share this to illustrate the similarity between how centrally planned economies and modern bureuacratic corporates
operate, focussing on control, compliance, and coordination. In contrast, open markets operate on low governance, high competition, free trade, voluntary players, and the ability to adapt quickly to changing conditions.
Ironically, many of us who tout the benefits of open market principles will also be operating in and perhaps even perpetuating principles akin to centrally-planned economies, despite how slow and ineffective they are in complex, dynamic environments.
How can we start to shift to more human-centric organisations?
To tackle the bane of bureaucracy, we need to change how we change. Just like in the NHS, real transformative change rolls up, not out, beginning with those on the front line, not those in the boardroom. We need to give everybody a voice, unleashing the creative talent, capabilities, and ideas at all levels of our organisations to rise to the increasing demands of our dynamic and volatile world.
To build credibility we will need more than rhetoric and high-minded speeches. We need to start with ourselves, leading by example by changing how we work and reducing bureaucratic waste in our areas before pointing the finger at others. To start with some practical steps, check out this blog on organising a hack day to break down bureaucratic behaviours and processes in your company, or reach out to me at hello@culture-coach.org.
Kommentare