A celebration of bureaucrats and bureaucracy. Whether in government, business, or non-profits, meetings, reports, meetings, conferences, reports, and meetings constitute daily life in a large organization.
Bureaucrats do not merely sit at their desks, calmly floating in an environment that outside energy supports. Bureaucrats play an active role in generating their own support. Scientists that levitated a frog insightfully explain: As you might well know, all matter in the universe consists of small particles called atoms and each atom contains electrons … Continue reading COB-43: bureaucrats contribute to their own support
Aggressive young men sometimes think that, with strength and intelligence, they can bludgeon their way through bureaucracy. They fail every time, and over time, they become frail, bitter, pensionless old men. Don’t let this happen to you. To achieve a secure retirement, you need to learn how to survive in the corporate world. Start by … Continue reading COB-42: strength and intelligence are futile
Good bureaucratic work requires well-aged ingredients, careful planning, and thorough attention to detail. You cannot bake your way through bureaucracy. Baking, braising, buttering, calculating, reporting, and all other forms of cooking have a bureaucratic flavor. A galantine de Poulard is an outstanding bureaucratic dish. The term galatine may come from the old French term for … Continue reading COB-41: bureaucratic cooking
Focus is a key to greatness. The best bureaucrats focus on doing their jobs. Entrepreneurs and innovators often lack formal job descriptions, and even if they had job descriptions, they probably wouldn’t follow them. But committed bureaucrats get their jobs done, day in and day out, year after year. That’s what makes a twenty-five-year service … Continue reading COB-40: focusing on your job
New activities often produce waste. If an activity is new, then you don’t know what result it will produce. If the new activity produces a result that you don’t want, then it was a waste. Bureaucrats avoid new activities. Thus bureaucrats avoid waste. Individual initiative often wastes resources. Consider, for example, a person who, on … Continue reading COB-39: bureaucrats reduce waste