The molasses of bureaucracy

Why is it that small lean companies can react like gazelles and achieve incredible productivity, while larger corporations just seem to be plodding along? More often than not, it's because the larger elephants become bogged down in the molasses of their own bureaucracy.

This is one of the good doctor's fundamental axioms: You must minimize the bureaucracy in order to maximize the bottom line.

Most companies start out lean. They are staffed by people who believe in the dream. Unfortunately, although the entrepreneurial leaders believe in making continuing sacrifices and taking prudent risks to succeed, others within the organization seek only to achieve a certain level of comfort. Once they achieve it, they start weaving their choking web of molasses, in order to guarantee their own future job security.

These folks want to build procedures that make their presence necessary, no matter what the state of the company. They care little about customers, fellow employees or profits; they just want to become indispensable by creating their own little empire.

To see this process in action, you need look no further than Medicare or Social Security. I have received letters from readers attesting to their experiences with bureaucrats involved in these organizations who seem to care far more about themselves than they do about the people they serve.

Our federal government bureaucracy is a vast, expensive, sticky morass (and remember, these are the people who want you to trust them to bring you affordable health care).

Three decades ago, I graduated from college and joined NASA as a young man with dreams to help humankind reach to the moon and beyond. I quickly became appalled at the bureaucracy that confronted me. The instrumentation program for Apollo was behind schedule, and I was refused any overtime to put the program back on track. Then a congressional delegation scheduled a visit, and I was offered all the overtime I wanted B not to put the program on track, but to prepare table-top exhibits for the visiting dignitaries.

Our branch had a manager who chose to sit around all day, never bothering to complete the work assigned to him. When I spoke to the division chief, who was well aware of the problem, he explained that it was far too difficult to fire a civil servant, so senior management was trying to locate a more senior position for this manager in another division so they could promote him out of our organization.

But enough of the obvious. Governments maximize bureaucracies because they don't have to show a profit.

What's your excuse? How is the bureaucracy quotient in your business?

Bureaucracies in for-profit businesses try to justify their services as being so valuable that the company would not be able to exist without them. What they may be doing is sucking company profits by spinning their molasses web and increasing overhead.

Senior executives would do well to look within the structure of their own companies and carefully analyze the cost of each bureaucratic department. Balance the cost to maintain your internal bureaucracies against the cost to secure the same services from outside the company. If it's less expensive to secure the same quality of service outside the company, then do it (unless you are merely in business for fun and could care less about profits). Otherwise, you are merely adding your own molasses to the existing webs and bogging down your company's bottom line even further.

Scott A. Clark welcomes your comments and contributions. You may send him your ideas for column topics by e-mail at mail

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