A speaker uses Gary Hamel's Bureaucracy Personal Inventory to show how working in bureaucracies changes you, not just the organization. The weekly self-audit asks if you hoarded power, stayed silent on bad policies, or played it safe. Personal accountability, he argues, will make bureaucratic structures collapse.
Bureaucracies. They're a giant pain in the neck. They stifle progress. They thwart innovation. They make us miserable. But while it's easy to complain about sclerotic, backward-looking organizations, we sometimes miss an important point. Bureaucracies can change us. The more time we spend in them, the more we risk quietly absorbing their wrongheaded values and practices. That's why I like the advice of Gary Hamel. The great management thinker and co-author of the book Humanocracy. He says that one of the best ways to bust bureaucracies in any workplace is to start with yourself. And a way to do that is something he calls the Bureaucracy Personal Inventory. The BPI. At the end of every week, test whether you've acted like a bureaucrat instead of a human being by asking yourself questions like these. Did I hold on to power when I should have shared it? Did I fail to challenge a counterproductive policy? Did I fake enthusiasm for one of my boss's ideas? Did I play it safe when I should have been bold? Ask yourself these questions and hold yourself accountable. As Gary says, bureaucracies will start to crumble when more of us just stop acting like bureaucrats.
