This week, your scribe has been on the wrong end of a massive chain of bureaucracy, trying to make small directional changes to a university administration system that has a turning circle several times that of the Titanic. The mining sector also faces bureaucratic challenge, but that will only grow as companies seek the responsiveness to lift margins without relying upon rising commodity prices. How can bureaucracy be overcome? The management literature may be one source of assistance to those seeking to ‘just get things done’
When it comes to under-rated business books, Adhocracy by Robert Waterman, published in 1990, takes some beating. Waterman presents 115 pages of evidence showing we are our own worst enemy as organisations when it comes to actually getting things done.
Waterman defined adhocracy as: “Any form of organisation that cuts across normal bureaucratic lines to capture opportunities, solve problems and get results”
Critically, adhocracy should not be confused with business anarchy. Systems and process are critical and indeed, can differentiate good companies from bad, but getting things done is critical too. Systems and processes need to be streamlined, rather than built up and extended as an end in themselves; a point that is often forgotten, particularly by those in charge of the said processes. Such people unwittingly see their value in building process to administrative perfection over and above achieving any actual results.
But leaving aside the book, to which reference is given below, let’s look at some pertinent examples. But first please excuse me for citing one example that I can never forget and that I hope will resonate with you, too*.
The story relates to the manager of Royal Dutch Shell’s Malaysian activities. Frustrated with excessive paperwork, the manager gathered up a vast stock of requests sent from headquarters. Knowing that a board meeting was taking place, he then jumped on a plane at Kuala Lumpur and went to The Hague unannounced, highly irregular behaviour in itself. He arrived at the board meeting and for all practical purposes barged in. He opened the suitcase on the spotless boardroom table and dumped out 30 pounds of forms, asking: “Do you want me to fill these out or hunt for oil?” The immediate response is not recorded, but the manager went on to head the Shell Group through a profitable overhaul.
The above story reminds me of working at a large oil and gas company. The MD was an early riser and was in the habit of leaving notes on people’s desks well before the freeway had hit peak traffic and most staff had arrived for work. These notes provided excellent direction to all that received them and could be used as ‘virtual currency’ to cut through layers of bureaucracy in real time in order to actually get things done.
I also remember vividly the MD’s mantra that an organisation should aim to minimise the time it spends doing business with itself, which aligns with the adhocracy theme espoused by Waterman. Let me repeat that statement. Large organisations can descend into bureaucracy such that they spend an inordinate amount of time on unproductive administrative process – not actually advancing a business initiative externally at all.
What lessons lie in the above dialogue? For the major miners, the challenge is very clear. Implementing a new regime of cost control could easily degenerate into a new (and expanded) regime of bureaucracy. That is to be avoided. The challenge is greater than it may at first appear. Why? Those who stand to gain from bureaucracy in terms of power and influence will resist – and use the bureaucratic system to do so.
For smaller resources companies and emerging miners, the challenge is to maintain the character of a smaller organisation as growth eventuates, where decisions do not get unduly held up by administrative process.
As for the likes of universities, perhaps the vice chancellor, like the oil and gas company MD, will take up the habit of writing individual notes to staff in order to assist in getting things done?
Good Hunting!
Allan Trench is a professor at Curtin Graduate School of Business and professor (value and risk) at the Centre for Exploration Targeting, University of Western Australia. He’s also a non-executive director of several resource sector companies - and the Perth representative for CRU Strategies, a division of independent metals and mining advisory CRU Group (allan.trench@crugroup.com).
*Adhocracy by Robert Waterman (1990). Norton & Company. The Royal Dutch Shell case study is from Peters & Austin (1985), A Passion for Excellence. Harper-Collins.
