Sunday, June 07, 2009

A Question Of Bureaucracy

I have a couple of thoughts buzzing around in my head this morning, so I thought I'd share them with you and see what you might have to say about these topics.

These thoughts grow out of a statement made by Jim Collins in the book Good To Great.

In summary, Collins says that bureaucratic cultures arise to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline, which arise from having the wrong people "on the bus" in the first place. Most companies build their bureaucratic rules to manage a small percentage of the wrong people, which in turn drives away the right people.

What I am wondering is this:

  • When you look at the history of government, what you see is the constant creation of bureaucracy. From the earliest governments to today, there has been a constant creation of bureaucratic systems and rules; rules have been piled upon rules - laws on top of laws - systems built upon systems.
  • Unlike a company that can, as Collins puts it, "invite people off of the bus", governments must exist within a society that is made up of the "right people" and the "wrong people". Some governments have tried to "invite the wrong people off of the bus." This is often seen as ethnic or cultural cleansing, or other socially unacceptable actions.
  • When governments cannot invite the "wrong" people off of the bus, they make laws to prevent the wrong people from behaving in ways that are perceived as wrong by those with the power to make rules.
My questions are:
  • If it is true that a company's success is dependent upon having the right people on the bus (having the right people on the team), is it also true that a society's success is dependent upon having the right people within the society? And, if this is true, how does the successful society identify the "wrong" people, and what does the society do with these people who do not contribute to the success of the society?
  • Also, if a bureaucracy is the result of incompetence and lack of discipline, which arise from having the wrong people "on the bus"; and a society cannot invite the "wrong" people off of the bus, is every society doomed to have a government and a bureaucracy that develops rules to manage a small percentage of the wrong people, which in turn drives away the right people?