Monday, January 3, 2006

[1825 - Rensselaer School, (now Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute),
first U.S. engineering college, opens in Troy, New York.]

[1868 - Meiji Restoration in Japan]

[1892 - J.R.R. Tolkien, writer, born at Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State]

William's Theory of the Bureaucracy - Part 2

An institution that has existed for 10 years or more has likely become a bureaucracy. This is true whether the institution is public or private, corporate, for-profit, nonprofit, charitable, benign or sinister. The transition to bureaucracy is characterized by loss of focus on the original purpose for which the organization was created. An attitude emerges in the rank-and-file that the customer, constituent, client, patient, shareholder, founder, patron, student, applicant, passenger, citizen, congregant, or audience is a necessary annoyance.

A number of organizations obtain bureaucratic status in less than a decade; others may require the full 10 years. The rate at which bureaucratic maturity is attained, and the degree of ossification, are dependent on management. The exceptional leader can delay the inevitable; mediocre management may accelerate the process. Just as human beings gradually lose flexibility, so also do organizations. It is part of the management circle of life.

Poor William's Whimsical Words:

Bureaucracy is to institutions as senility is to living organisms.

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