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Battling Bureaucracy

Do you engage in battling bureaucracies? I doubt any of my blog readers don’t have this frustrating life experience. Indeed, I think that some libraries have become more bureaucracies than libraries! Often the latest innovation is just matter of simplification and reducing layers of forms and permissions.

This series of postings is very wise. I recommend that you read them and absorb some of the wisdom and start practicing some of their recommendations:

Fight The System: Battling Bureaucracy — Part 1
Fight The System: Battling Bureaucracy — Part 2
by Paul Boag

Here’s the tips (but read the detail):

1. Understand your team’s culture
2. Improve How Your Team Is Perceived
3. Communicate Better
4. Create Value
5. Be Positive
6. Become the Expert
7. Overcome Politics And Problem People
8. Keep your friends close…… But Your Enemies Closer
9. Avoid Confrontation
10. Learn to Empathize
11. Ensure Approval
12. Influencers
13. Avoid Committees, Talk to Individuals
14. Collaborate Rather Than Seek Approval
15. Control the Feedback
16. Focus on Problems, Not Solutions
17. Deliver In Scope And On Time
18. Work Within a Structure
19. Talk About Phasing Development

There are no magic bullets. This is difficult stuff and there are no easy answers. We’re also working with people and that always gets messy. There is, however, a lot of good advice in these two articles online so I recommend reading them. And if you’ve successfuly managed to avoid bureaucracy for lo these many years, please write an article about how you did that!

Stephen

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Posted on: September 24, 2010, 7:15 am Category: Uncategorized

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  1. Good points. Unless you’re on an island by yourself, you must deal with bureaucracy effectively or succumb to mediocrity or worse–something which none of us can afford.