A page on human behaviour

How to bust a bureaucrat

It's very, very simple. Just make them accountable for their actions.

Julius Caesar said Without authority, there is no responsibility. But that's only half of it.

Without responsibility, there should be no authority.

And wherever this is violated, you will inevitably get problems. But wherever this is observed, you can't get bureaucracy. Mind you, accountable needs to mean accountable, and actions needs to include all actions. If your bureaucrat is not penalised for the consequences of delay, for example, then you can expect nothing else than delay. On the other hand, this means that if your bureaucrat is accountable for all consequences including delay, in-trays will be cleared in a reasonable time, and delays will only occur if there is a valid reason.

An accountable bureaucrat is not really a bureaucrat at all. They become an administrator. And we need good administrators, and we should be prepared to pay them well, and it will be a good investment.

On the other hand, any unaccountable bureaucrat/administrator at any level should quite simply be fired. Now. Part of professional responsibility is not to take on work you are not competent to do. If they were a competent administrator, they would not have accepted a position without accountability. Ergo, they are quite simply incompetent to do the job in question. Out. Next.

And look very closely at firing their boss, or whoever appointed them to that job despite their incompetence, too, on the same logic.

It's like the trucking industry. Just as there are many people willing to accept the lifestyle of a long-distance truckie, so there are many people interested in careers in administration. Every time we allow a bad truckie on the road, we put a good one off the road.

And similarly, every time we appoint a bureaucrat, we deny a competent administrator that job. 

See also:

• Management by objectives
• Sanity
• So-called Universities