By Thomas R. Schori, Ph.D., and Michael L. Garee, Principals, Millennium Marketing Research, 808 E. Ironwood, Normal, IL 61761-5239.
Abraham Lincoln reportedly said something like this: "God must love the common man because He made so many of them." Well, to paraphrase Lincoln¾and with no intention whatsoever of being sacrilegious¾it might also be said with equal accuracy today that God must also love "bureaucrats" because He sure seems to have made a lot of them, too!
At one time the term "bureaucrat" was pretty much exclusively reserved for petty functionaries employed in various levels of government. These people were¾and still are, of course¾the ones who actually ran the government, not the elected officials who may come and go over the years. These bureaucrats had¾and, again, still have¾very definite "marching orders," a specific way of doing everything, a proper form for every eventuality, ad nauseam, and woe be unto the unwary "civilian" who attempted to shortcut the system.
Unfortunately, no longer is the term "bureaucrat" reserved for this small legion of government workers. Today, in virtually every business, no matter the size, one encounters emerging legions of a new class of bureaucrats¾business bureaucrats!
You know the type we’re talking about. Go into virtually any store today to buy something, or engage in some kind of interaction with this company or that, and chances are you’re likely to encounter one of these new bureaucrats. Let us relate a couple of our recent experiences in this regard.
A few weeks ago, one of us went to a local variety store (an outlet for a national chain) to buy a certain type of eyeglasses case. As luck would have it, there was only one left of the type we wanted, but no price tag was on the item. No sweat, we thought, we would merely take the item to the checkout counter and ask the checker to "scan" the item to derive the price. No such luck. The item apparently wasn’t in the "system," so the checker was unable to determine the price. The checker called the store manager, who surely would know how to deal with this dilemma, we reasoned. Wrong again. The manager said since a price couldn’t be determined for the item it couldn’t be sold. Sorry, store rules. No price tag, no sale, no exceptions, no way.
The offshoot of this experience? The glasses case was purchased at another store, and of course, the firm vow was made never to do business with the original variety store ever again! No how, no way.
Another ongoing experience of ours. Since we’re in the business of selling our research services, we do a lot of prospecting among companies of all sizes throughout the U.S. One of the methods we use is to send faxes to key marketing and research decision-makers. Since no mailing list is ever 100% accurate, from time to time we direct faxes to the wrong people or to the wrong fax numbers. For the most part, whenever this occurs, people on the receiving end are kind enough to fax us back, telling us the right person to contact or giving us the correct fax number. Still, in about 10 to 15 percent of the cases, we receive "chastising" faxes back indicating that we’ve made a mistake. Period. In other words, we’re brought to task for not having followed that particular company’s proper "protocol."
To be sure, we find this last example of bureaucratic behavior rather humorous. That is, until we start thinking about the way these bureaucrats probably also are treating others who may not follow the "correct" procedures for contacting the company, say, for example, customers, or prospective customers. Hmm, sheds a whole new light on it, doesn’t it?
Having spent a considerable amount of time ourselves in small, medium and large organizations, we’re certainly not surprised to find that there are numerous bureaucrats in virtually all companies. We definitely ran into our share over the years, but it wasn’t all that tolerable then, and, to be honest about it, it still isn’t very tolerable today. But that really isn’t the main point we’re making here. Rather, we have a far more pertinent, far more capitalistic main point.
When one stops to think about it, the literal profusion of bureaucracy in business today has got to be costing business a great deal of money! How? Through the inefficiencies inherent in bureaucracies. The cost of lowered employee morale because of having to deal with bureaucrats day in and day out. The cost of lost goodwill among customers and prospective customers.
With the economy still humming along quite nicely today, it’s easy to see how businesses might be able to justify absorbing such costs, we suppose. But what will happen when the economy cools, as certainly it shall someday? Maybe, just maybe, companies will have to start eliminating some of these bureaucrats and streamlining the way they do business, becoming more customer-friendly, start doing the "right things" instead of doing things "right," or according to what the company deems is "right." Just a thought!