Implementing the Bureaucratic Black Arts?

bildungsroman_yorick asks: "Many unlucky workers in their careers have encountered the bureaucracy, the careerism, the project death march and the office politics that hold people back from performing to high standards of work. In some office environments that I've encountered half a supervisors workload involves giving your workers room to operate and protecting them from the bureaucracy and politics. I have come to realise that it's the natural way of business culture to behave this way and the only way I can let my workers be productive is to be one step ahead of the politics, even if that means breaking the rules. So what I'd like to ask some of the more savvier Slashdot denizen: What are some of the bureaucratic black arts that you've performed in your workplace to work around the office politics and get your work done on time and to a high standard?"

Comments

It takes some practice

[b0r1s]

A few things that have helped me:

1) Honesty works better with technical folks; sugarcoating works better with business folks.

2) Reverse (1) for those concerned about financials or with titles beginning with 'C' - CFOs and COOs like honesty.

3) If your organization has more than 3 divisions, make sure that no employee is less than 5 levels away from the top - too many levels makes communication impossible

Golden rule to getting something done

[totallygeek]

It is easier to get forgiven than to get permission!

Re:Ash Nazg Durbatuluk...

[nine-times]

Damn. Just goes to show, always preview. Should read:

In line with these:

4) Intimidate.
The worst bureaucrats are often cowards. It's kind of like the old idea that if you want to get rid of a bully, punch him once in the nose. Now, it'll take more finesse than a punch in the nose, but find ways to establish yourself as an authority, and the merely bureaucratic will become afraid to cross you. and the corollary of that is:

5) Train others to take orders.
Get used to telling them, in no uncertain terms, what you need for things. Start out making these seem like requests. Slowly shift those requests into technical issues of "If you want A, you'll have to give me B." Make this a purely technical issue, i.e. "I can't give you A without B," as opposed to "I won't give you A without B." Give full explanations as to why, and make sure you're right. Give them reason to trust you.

Let them learn to trust you to determine for yourself what you need, and once they trust you, make your explanations complex, incomprehensible, and long. Make them bored with your explanations. When you're sure they're bored, start replacing your explanations with "trust me". Eventually, drop the "trust me" and you'll find you're just telling people what to do. This process takes some practice (and good instincts), but if you're careful and you do this right, you can create a situation where you can tell people, "I need you to do C," and they'll do it, [almost] no questions asked.

Remember the Milgram experiment? People respond to authority, and having a corner office or an important title aren't the only ways to get people to view you as an authority. Find ways to get people to listen to you, get people to trust you, keep your head up, appear proud, appear to "know what you're doing", etc. Learn to lead, and people will follow. Yes, you might say that my advice boils down to "beat them at their own game". If you're fighting people who've gained authority through technicalities and fancy titles, you just need to find another way to steal authority for yourself.

Re:Getting things done

[tom's a-cold]

I second that. On one of my first performance appraisals, I was rated very highly for getting everything done well and on time, but I was told that I should learn how and when to work around the system and be more willing to do so when necessary. This came from one of our VP's, a great guy. One of the best bits of mentoring advice I ever got.

Put more theoretically: Bagehot, long ago, when writing on the British political system, distinguished the "efficient" from the "dignified" parts of the polity. On a smaller scale, the same is true in organizations. There's the org chart and the officially-sanctioned roles and bodies, then there are the social networks by which work really gets done. I've done some analysis of social networks while developing collaboration solutions for my clients, and it's interesting how seldom they correspond with the formal organization.

Incidentally, this is why Sarbanes-Oxley is profound, destructive idiocy, despite its good intentions. If most organizations only operated in accordance with their documented roles and responsibilities, they would be out of business.

As for the voodoo arts of bureaucracy, here are a few highlights:

1. Learn to run a meeting. Know what you want from the meeting and grease it with the key participants beforehand. Come with an agenda, document decisions and (especially) actions. With dates. Then, hold follow-ups to status the actions, and escalate as soon as the actions aren't delivered on. This is critical: document commitments, and document when those commitments aren't being met. And be sure to supply need dates that allow you to go to Plan B if Plan A goes wrong. That also means that it's up to you to know what Plan B is.

2. Expect insane delays from any external organization you depend on. Escalate the schedule risk of these delays to your management and have them negotiate service-level agreements with them ASAP.

3. Identify well-protected non-performers early, and give them highly visible, non-critical tasks with clearly-defined completion criteria. They'll either come through, or they'll screw up in front of an audience. If they're seen to fail, you can push them aside into boring, non-critical roles or get rid of them.

4. If you're doing project management, be sure that you don't have anyone on your team unless you write their performance appraisal or (if they're contractors) decide whether to pay their firm. Matrixed organizations are set up specifically to prevent accountability. If you don't own their ass, they don't work for you, they're just getting in the way.

5. Get high-level allies. If you're on an IT project, make it clear to your business sponsors where the bottlenecks are. They're usually far more capable of solving those problems than you are on your own. And always state the problem in objective terms of "This is what we have to have and this is what we're getting" rather than "This guy's a moron." Even if he's a moron. Even better if you have suggestions on how the solution should look.

6. If your external dependency is on a non-performer and you can't convince them to do the job right, suck it up and have one of your resources do it for them. And make sure that it's clear to everyone that this is what you've done. Then, if they refuse to accept the work, make them explain why it's going to take them three weeks to solve a problem that you have already solved.

7. If you're in a corner and the only way out is to violate the procedures, consider the consequences of complying, and of not complying. Then decide. Most businesses won't fire you for getting the job done unless somebody's put in danger of incarceration by your bending the rules. More typically, you're a hero if you deliver on budget and on schedule. If you don't, nobody gives you credit for failing even if you did it by the book.

shitblocker

[Anthony Boyd]

One of my employees called me a "shitblocker" because I was so good at keeping the crap away from the team. However, I had another employee who just saw too much of the bad stuff, and it got to him. So I'm not posting as someone who has done a universally good job at this. Having made my disclaimer, here are few things I've done.

• Don't tell your employees when you've had a row with your boss. At least some employees have not just empathy, but a susceptibility to transferrence. In other words, you tell the employees you got into it with your boss, and a handful of them will get all worked up, even though they weren't involved.
• Don't use the previous point as handcuffs. You are not obligated to portray yourself as completely buying into the company line. Just don't rant to your employees about it. If they are frustrated that upper management had made a poor decision, it's reasonable to let the employees know that you think there are better ways, and that you'll keep trying to get upper management on board. But you don't want to start complaining, "I just had a shouting match with my boss, and that idiot wouldn't see sanity if it came up and punched him in the face!"
• This is hard, but, you have to keep the chain of command in line. There are many bosses who think it's good to get to know everyone underneath them, no matter how many levels removed. And to a degree, it is. Friendliness is always welcome. However, many execs will take it too far, and start stepping on toes (because they can) and undermining the managers beneath them. If you tell your employee "I'll evaluate you for 6 months, and we'll discuss a raise then" and your boss tells the employee "all salaries are frozen" or "I'll get you a raise" then your authority is screwed. Or, if you tell your employee something is a priority, and your boss tells them otherwise (especially if they don't clue you in), then you've just become ineffective. So, even as a lower manager, you have to tell your superiors that you are in charge of your team, and they need to go through you. And then you need to keep on top of that, so nobody feels the need to go around you.
• Get your employees into the limelight when things are good. Get them out of the limelight when things are bad. More than that, you do NOT want to blame your employees for anything. That doesn't mean you assume blame for everything, and get fired. But it does mean that the blame game is lose-lose, and you say so to any upper manager who insists on playing. Your employees are either protected (because they deserve more chances), or fired (because they don't). There is no in between, unless you're documenting things for HR.
• Building on the previous point, while you don't ever want to leave your employees twisting in the wind with the execs, you also don't want them to let you take all their blame. I had one employee sit quietly by while the CEO chewed me out for something the employee had done (I warned him not to do it -- I knew the CEO would hate it). What was my mistake? I kept the employee for 2 more years, and had that same scenario play out again and again. You block crap for your employees, but you do so because they are worthy employees. Don't be a martyr, especially for any employee who is simply using you as a meat sheild.