More on Red-Tape and Innovation

This time it is an answer to Stephanie. Stephanie and I are in a group together and she is quite quick. She made a point about red-tape and bureaucracy that I thought was outstanding. 

I agree with her in almost all of the points she lays out on mechanization creating consistency. I loved what she wrote when she stated; "It is when an organization becomes overly reliant on the machine of the organization for all other decisions (policy, hiring, management, etc) or at the expense of people and innovation that bureaucratic friction is created."

That turn of phrase, overly reliant on the machine of the organization for decision making, is quite apt. Red tape and bureaucracy it seems to me is designed to take the thought out of day to day business and leave it to the process to make decisions. And so often that red tape is unnecessarily complex and convoluted and makes it tough to get through the system. As I mentioned before it's when someone applies thought that they can manage to navigate or bust the red tape. 

I think some of the organizations with the least red tape and bureaucracies are those that have the fewest people. I think about one man operations and the red tape is just on that one person to manage and create and therefore there is very little. I think bureaucratic red tape grows as the company grows, but that it can be managed as you have said as long as it doesn't become the prime decision making process.