You know the old folk-saying, “A bureaucrat on a roll gathers moss.” In Japanese gardens, moss (dobashi) adds a sense of calm, age, and stillness. The same is true within organizations.
Here are six additional reasons why you need moss in your organization:
- Moss can transform a manager’s hard bark into a green, sound-absorbing surface.
- Moss can provide a modern, green look to an organization with a lot of dead wood.
- Moss has excellent synergies with organizations implementing modern principles of mushroom management.
- Moss grows well in dim environments and will thrive deep within office buildings.
- The softness of moss-covered walls helps to lessen employee injuries from head-banging.
- The light-green color of moss goes well with yellowing blue shirts.
Moss can be cultivated in many different varieties. The Carnival of Bureaucrats recommends Splachnum sphaericum:
The stinkmoss species Splachnum sphaericum develops insect pollination further by attracting flies to its sporangia with a strong smell of carrion, and providing a strong visual cue in the form of red-coloured swollen collars beneath each spore capsule. Flies attracted to the moss carry its spores to fresh herbivore dung, which is the favoured habitat of the species of this genus.
If you don’t already have it, get some moss in your bureaucratic organization today!
In other bureaucratic issues this month, the US Federal Register has been criticized for accepting document submissions on floppy disks. Accepting document submissions on floppy disks not only honors bureaucratic inertia, but also shows sound business judgment:
In the end, it’s a matter of what’s cheaper. You can pay a lady to load A LOT of floppy disks before you’ve spent the same amount of money that a fundamental IT change costs. And I’m sure the people submitting the files will rather deliver on a floppy than pay a new $35 filing fee to fund the PKI infrastructure.
Change is expensive. Don’t change unless you can’t think of a reason not to.
The Morning Star Company, which processes tomatoes, is demonstrating the elimination of not only line management and upper management, but also middle management. The Morning Star Self-Management Institute is peddling this dangerous approach to all organizations. We call upon organizational leaders to quash this threat to bureaucracy.
Another frightening business development is “get shit done” organizational culture. This ideological disease is prevalent among startups, entrepreneurs, innovators, and other disreputable figures. Fortunately, David Spinks has roundly denounced “get shit done” culture: “That’s a bad culture. It’s bad management. Poor communication.” Don’t dump on your organization’s bureaucracy if you want your organization to endure and expand.
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 quote that you attribute to “old folks” is very offensive to your older readers. Putting a grammatical error in an alleged quote was no doubt done as a put down to Old Folks. Old folks understand grammar and they would never say: “A bureaucratic on a roll gathers moss.”
Old folks know a lot more about bureaucracy than most young folks. Before these computer things, there was a requirement for even more bureaucrats than there are today. You need also consider that moss grows slowly. Old bureaucrats have had a lot more time to grow moss than these young whipper snappers that call themselves bureaucrats today.
We apologize for the inadvertent offense to old folks. The saying is an old folk-saying, i.e. the saying, not the folk, is old. We have also corrected “bureaucratic” to “bureaucrat.” We also agree that, all else equal, older persons know more about bureaucracy than do younger persons.