The Bureaucrat (-A--)

What happens if a manager is exclusively (A)-oriented? Zero (P), zero (E), zero (I). An (-A--).

What is the (-A--) interested in? While the Lone Ranger – the (P---) – is exclusively interested in what, the (-A--) is only interested in how. That’s why I call him a Bureaucrat: “Never mind what we do; it’s how we do it that counts.”

Bureaucrats tend to rise in their organizations by following the rules, often to the point of excess. A Bureaucrat may be the easiest to spot of the four mismanagement types. Certainly, he is one of the easiest to satirize.

In literature, there’s a great example of a Bureaucrat. Captain Queeg, in Herman Wouk’s novel The Caine Mutiny, has risen through the ranks of the Navy, not because he was especially competent at leading a crew or running a ship, but because he followed the rules. He says so himself:

Now, I’m a book man, as anyone who knows me will tell you. … When in doubt, remember we do things on this ship by the book. You go by the book and you’ll get no argument from me. You deviate from the book and you better have a half dozen damn good reasons – and you’ll still get a hell of an argument from me.

What characteristics typify an (-A--) type, or Bureaucrat?

The Bureaucrat spends an excessive amount of time worrying about (A)dministrative details. He prefers to do things right rather than do the right things. In other words, he would rather be precisely wrong than approximately right.

Here’s a joke that will illustrate this point: I was flying over Brazil some years ago. Sitting next to me was a leading accountant from a leading accounting firm, a big (-A--). We were looking through the window, and we saw the Amazon River. He said, “Dr. Adizes, did you know that this river is a billion years and seven months old?”

“How did you get a billion years and seven months old?” I asked, amazed.

“Well, seven months ago someone told me it was a billion years old.”

Bureaucrats pay attention to the form, to the number to the very last digit —at the expense of the total picture. The Bureaucrat may be focused on the wrong market, the wrong product —the wrong direction!— but his reports always look very good because the numbers are calculated to the third decimal.

If you ask a Bureaucrat to give you a report analyzing whether your company should try to penetrate the New York market, he’ll say, “Sure,” and disappear for a while. He’ll accumulate data and analyze it ad infinitum. But by the time he comes back with his recommendation, that market may already have been claimed by your competitor.

Why? Because the Bureaucrat prefers not to take risks. He does not want to be embarrassed by making the wrong decision. He wants everything safe and organized. He’s precisely wrong. He’s running a very well-controlled disaster: The company is going broke, but on time.

When does he come to work? On time. When does he leave work? On time. How is his desk? Clean, all in neat piles.

He wants everything to be perfect and under control, and he is capable of spending an inordinate amount of time and money on a marginal control that is really not worth it. Such demanding perfectionism can suffocate a company.

While the Lone Ranger focuses exclusively on function, assuming the form will follow, the Bureaucrat behaves as if he believes that form produces function. Now, sometimes that is true; military leaders assume that the form produces the function, that if you polish your shoes and shave exactly as required and hold your head exactly as required and march exactly as required, when the time comes and they tell you to go and attack and sacrifice your life, you will run and do exactly as instructed. So the form will produce the function.

But here is the danger: Sometimes, the form is so inflexible that it will not produce the function. That’s why partisans and guerrilla forces invariably defeat organized establishment armies: They rely more on (I) than on (A) in asking people to put their lives on the line.

The Bureaucrat has an organizational chart readily accessible – if it is not on paper, it is in his head. He has no trouble finding any of the organization’s rules or procedures at a moment’s notice. He manages by means of directives, usually in writing. Even when violations are necessary to produce the right results, he won’t tolerate his subordinates’ breaking the rules.

The (-A--)’s free time is spent looking for new transgressions against the system. When he finds one, he designs a new form, a new report, or a new policy that will prevent the transgression from being repeated.

Like the Lone Ranger, the Bureaucrat is very literal-minded. An (-A--) needs to see something for himself in order to believe it. Unlike an (E)ntrepreneur, who can look at shapes through the fog and discern an elephant, an (-A--) will not infer anything. A big ear and a big leg and a big back do not add up to an elephant until the fog rises. Even then, he’ll want to touch it and smell it before he’s totally convinced.

Bureaucrats are also prone to what I call “manualitis”: Everything is documented, processes are monotonously described step by step, and the written word begins to dominate the organization’s behavior.

People who are managed by an (-A--) spend an enormous amount of time reading memos and writing memos and filing memos and responding to memos. This cuts down efficiency tremendously.

A Bureaucrat knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing, for the following reason: The cost is for sure, the value is maybe. He will tell you, “We cannot do this. It’s too expensive.” But the truth is that very often, the cost of not doing may be higher than the cost of doing. I’ll give you an American expression that exemplifies this principle: “If you think education is expensive, think of the alternative.”

But an (-A--) will prefer not to take the risk or spend the money. He will waste precious time gathering more information and more details and more justifications and more studies and more analyses – all to minimize risk. But time costs money, and meanwhile the opportunity will slip away.

The Bureaucrat can subvert the goals of the organization through his insistence on observing the letter of the law, even when departures from it are essential. His primary and often exclusive commitment is to implement a plan, regardless of its wisdom or even its ethics.

At his 1961 trial in Jerusalem for implementing the genocide of European Jewry, Adolf Eichmann’s defense was a morbid and extreme example of this type of behavior. Eichmann described his role in the Third Reich as having been “an administrator of trains.” The fact that at one end of the railway line were the victims and their homes, and at the other end were the extermination camps, did not preoccupy him.

Bureaucrats frequently have difficulty revisiting a decision during the implementation phase. “We decided,” he’ll say. “We spent a lot of time on this decision. We spent a lot of money on it. We are not going to open this chapter again!” Unfortunately, the world often changes even faster than you can implement a plan to adapt to the changes. A typical Bureaucrat resists such change.

While the Lone Ranger evaluates himself by how hard he works and by the results he achieves, the Bureaucrat evaluates himself by how well he controls the system and by his success in eliminating deviations and minimizing uncertainty. Because of this, he tends to be a crowning example of . He gets increasing numbers of subordinates to implement the same task, trying to control every detail, without achieving any apparent increase in productivity.

Bureaucrats are linear thinkers: A, B, C, D, E, F, G. They do not understand that sometimes G relates to H and H relates to A and A relates to J and J relates to B. They get very upset when they perceive a discussion as getting out of order. Discussions do need to be open to lots of different options, but an (-A--) can’t see that.

The Bureaucrat hires people like himself – people who do as they are told and will not take the initiative. They do not ask questions challenging the status quo; they avoid rocking the boat.

I call the Bureaucrat’s subordinates yes-yes men, or office clerks. But although they have a clerk mentality, they are not necessarily clerks. They could be vice presidents earning $100,000 a year or more. Regardless, they must come on time, leave on time, and do everything by the book.

There’s even a joke about this kind of subordinate: A new person arrives in Hell and is sent to a bureaucratic department in Hell to work. When he arrives, he finds that all the other workers are standing in fecal matter up to their lips. Horrified, he asks, “How do you work here?”

“Just don’t make waves!” is the reply.

Why? Because the Bureaucrat’s subordinates know that if a problem is revealed, the Bureaucrat is going to have to find out who did it, why, how, where, and when. In a word, there is going to be a witch-hunt.

Does the Bureaucrat hold staff meetings? You bet your life: Every Monday and Friday from 9 to 12. Secretaries take minutes; the last meeting’s conclusions are discussed and verified as to their implementation. There is order, and along with it, there is boredom with the myriad details that the Bureaucrat insists on covering.

Does he have an agenda? Absolutely. In detail. Does the agenda deal with important subjects? Not necessarily. The company might be losing market share, even going bankrupt, but the Bureaucrat will be droning on about the need to fill out the necessary forms in duplicate and on time.

The Bureaucrat loves training. He wishes he could program everybody and make every process a routine.

Change, to a Bureaucrat, is a threat of major proportions. His ingenuity in finding reasons to discourage new projects makes him an obstructionist. The organization has to achieve its goals in spite of him, and those in the organization who are committed to getting things done will quickly learn to bypass him in trying to implement change.

What is an (-A--)’s typical answer when a subordinate asks for permission to do something different? “No.” Before you even finish the sentence: “No.” Here is a typical Bureaucrat on the phone (this is a Russian joke): “No. No. No. Yes. No. No. No.”

“What was that one ‘yes’ about?” you ask.

“He asked me if I heard him clearly.”

Under the Bureaucrat, strategic planning is at best an exercise in forecasting, and quite often it simply analyzes the past and projects it into the future.

So what is next year’s budget or goal? “What we are sure we can achieve. How about some sure number above the one we reached last year?” is the Bureaucrat’s typical approach.

By the time an (-A--) is eliminated from an organization, that organization may have become so mired in regulations and rules that it will have difficulty adapting to long overdue changes, either internally or externally or both.