When entering a meeting room, well-trained bureaucrats always hold a document in front of themselves. The position of the document relative to the bureaucrat’s ventral surface depends on the importance of the document. Unimportant documents are held low. Important documents are held high. So if you consider a memo that you have prepared for a meeting to be highly important, walk into the meeting holding your memo high above your head.
In other bureaucratic issues this month, Ben Horowitz at ben’s blog describes “how to minimize politics in your company.” His central point is “build strict processes for potentially political issues and do not deviate.” Put more simply, build a strong bureaucracy. Horowitz is a leading entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Even he recognizes the value of bureaucracy.
At McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Christopher Mah presents the Middle Manager’s Oath. All middle managers should affirm this oath to make the world a better place. The oath robustly upholds the value of bureaucratese, also known as jargon: “Jargon is not meaningless as long as it is strategic, measurable, and scalable.” That’s a game-changing declaration.
The Independence Hall Association (IHA) developed and maintains a U.S. history and civics website. IHA was established in Philadelphia in 1942. IHA’s age and bureaucratic history indicate that it’s a bureaucratic organization. Nonetheless, IHA’s webpage entitled “who are the bureaucrats?” concerns only U.S. federal government workers. It deserves credit for an inclusive treatment of the federal government workforce:
Vince and Larry, U.S. Department of Transportation crash test dummies, have been used in ad campaigns encouraging motorists to wear seatbelts and discouraging drunk driving. The Department of Transportation is instrumental in enforcing regulations regarding automobiles, railroads, and aviation.
Contrary to the scope of IHA’s web page, the vast majority of bureaucrats are not part of the federal government workforce. Bureaucrats shuffle papers in the private sector, fill out forms in non-profit organizations, and help to ensure that proper procedures are followed in nursery schools, libraries, local planning departments, state commissions, and many other organizations. Wherever there are desks and paper, bureaucrats will be found.
That’s all for this month’s Carnival of Bureaucrats. Enjoy previous bureaucratic carnivals here. Nominations of posts to be considered for inclusion in next month’s carnival should be submitted using Form 376: Application for Bureaucratic Recognition.
The most prominent bureaucratic invention of our generation is the “sequester” of budgeted funds. People and politicians have come to almost understand the terms “budget” and “appropriations”. This posed a great danger to the bureaucrats in that people almost understood what they did. But the bureaucrats prevailed again by inventing a new term “sequester” which no normal person could possibly understand. The creation of budgets is a major bureaucratic undertaking. Hence changing a budget on short notice would bring into question the vast amount of time spent by the bureaucrats devising the budget. Sequestering funds, solves this problem in that it does not change the budget. Furthermore managing the sequestered funds provides an opportunity for more bureaucrats. The process works this way — bureaucrats devise a budget and have it approved. The budget is thousands and pages long and no one understands it. Congress then appropriates funds sufficient to fund the budget. Next congress passes a law to sequester the appropriated funds. The result nothing get done — a wonderful bureaucratic solution that works in a way bureaucrats love – lots of activity – no results.
You describe a lot of results, and then claim “no results.” Results are results. And by the way, we believe that the cover sheet is a more important invention than the sequester.
A cover sheet is certainly important. However, a good bureaucrat reacts to what is timely. Sequester is the word of the day. Every good presentation in this day and age must use the word sequester at least three times
One further note — the term sequester does not only apply to “money”. For example one could sequester a report until a later time. Also one could sequester a line of reasoning until a later time. In response to a question, a good bureaucrat could just say he was sequestering the answer to the question until a later (undefined ) time. In conclusion “sequester” is a very important multi-use work.
You’re right about sequester. That word includes the ideas of separate and hold. These are both ideas with great bureaucratic merit.