Bureaucratic Creep

When an organization first matures, it is likely to be an effective and efficient operation. Its goals, design, rules, methods, tools, and personnel have been well selected and developed. The organization chugs along doing a very good job.

Over time the organization is very likely to start to degenerate. Here are some of the reasons.

• People involved in the original design and building of the organization did not have the ability, foresight, or time to write a guiding document that tells why the origination operates the way it does. When they leave for other work or die, there is no "history" to guide their replacements. The replacements often do not really understand the organization, its goals, and operation.
• The Peter Principle begins to operate. This is where successful lower level managers are promoted simply because they have been successful in their present jobs. Unfortunately, quite often they are incompetent in their new positions. There is a great reluctance to demote them or fire them. They stay in the positions for which they are incompetent. Eventually many positions become filled with incompetent people.
• Well meaning people with good motives and wanting to make a name for themselves begin to make changes. Some of these changes have unintended bad consequences. The person who made the changes is often gone by the time the negative effects are recognized. Their replacement does not know the history of what was before, or why the organization does things the way it does. ("We've always done it that way, so there must be a good reason.")
• It does not recognize the changes, their meaning for the organization, or how they should adapt to meet the changes. (For schools, societal changes were not adequately considered.)
• [In the case of our schools, the raw materials (the students) have changed. The school system has not adequately adapted to compensate for those changes.]

From the above it should be clear that changes occur in little bits over a long time. Nobody really notices the totality of the changes, nor understands their real effects. Cause and effect relationships can be poorly understood, or not seen at all.

Bureaucratic creep occurs because of these thinking errors:

• The changes sounded good at the time. They did not look for things that would discredit the idea. (See Hypotheses & Theories on the Thinking pages.)
• Members of the bureaucracy did not take the time to test the changes before widely implementing them. This is a form of arrogance: "I am so good that my ideas do not have to be tested!"
• A system approach was not adequately applied. Changes were considered (too much) in isolation from other factors. (A form of tunnel vision!)
• Inadequate data used.
• Lack of overview of the entire system. (Lack of system thinking.)
• Contradictory data ignored. (People tend to do that!)
• Societal changes were not adequately considered.
• (Schools) Changes in the children were not adequately taken into account
  • Increased learning disabilities
  • Impact by societal changes
  • Poor development of personhood outside of school

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