The Bureaucratic Man

A non-organisation man working within a bureaucracy would often miss the fine balance between staff relations and work, and risks compromising the latter for the former. A manager with little experiences in people-oriented leadership positions is likely to face difficulties in moving people, and henceforth, in driving the business forward. The main reason is that he would be less apt in behaving in the right modes to manage the expectations and nuances of human relations, so as to fine tune work coordination and to upgrade the business to higher strata.

Moving people requires a solid grounding in understanding group dynamics. In a simple form, group dynamics is highest with lesser decision-makers. A person makes his own decision and reacts fastest to it; a pair takes a bit of discussion; group warrants more communications, and an organisation would take a longer time for consensus. Group dynamics is about making relevant decisions within a mass of people FAST and putting these decisions into actions FAST. Various measures (e.g. rank and file, compartmentalisation, job decentralisation etc) had been implemented to improve group dynamics in big organisations. The army is a good example.

In the perspective of a small office environment, a key to improving the business lies in the management of staff and of business decisions. This implies that a manager should know how to behave at times of normal operations and of crisis.

• During normal operations, one could be friendly to all so as to smoothen staff-channel workflow, so as to do away with the "by right" hindrance. For e.g., a research analyst who tries to get raw data from a data collector in another department. The data collector could either pass the data to the analyst right away or hinder by consulting the Head of Data Collection for approval.

• At critical times, for e.g., when the ouput volume remains low despite long hours of work, a manager would have to stick his thumb in and address the situation affirmatively. In the same e.g., while the manager may seek opinions, too many are no good. Democracy has to be limited to swiftly put a plausible solution on trial. An authoritative figure is needed.

A non-organisation man would have little difficulties for para 1 with a little guidance and OJT, but for para. 2, he risks not being firm enough to tell others to just do it. He tends to straddle on a solution half-strung between the colleagues' and his. He is stereotypically fickle-minded, runs a high risks of losing focus on the solution and digresses it to human relations. Now ... when things screw up again, what was not optimal? Who is now accountable to the new screw-up? Did giving in to his colleagues' views distort his original views on crisis resolution? Ultimately, despite all nitty-gritty reasons, the blatant fact is - the manager did not come out with a solution good enough to resolve the company's crisis.

In brief, at peace time, one can afford to be friendly; at critical times, lead with a strong rationale, hear limited & selected views, devise a good solution, be firm in the implementation even if it brings frowns to some people's faces.

In a related issue, ever wonder

• why as one climbs higher, one's social circle shrinks?
• why some top leaders are difficult to deal with?
• why the logic behind some top prerogatives differs so much from those of the lower echelons?

I think as managers and leaders are groomed, they become increasingly devoid of human emotions and become more and more result-oriented. These top leaders think operationally & strategically, while the lower echelons think tactically. The differences in the mental models (i.e. logic, result orientation, perception of staff relations vs work etc) between leaders and the lower echelons would generate questions as above. It takes someone with an understanding of this blog entry's content to accept these differences as a common phenomenon in bureaucracies.

PS: When tactical problems have grown to a big magnitude that is not easily detectable by the top, the lower echelons would need an eloquent middle-manager to logically bring the matter up.