Great post! I really appreciate the history and breakdown of the two different approaches.
I am also inclined to agree with your suspicion that bureaucracy cannot be eradicated from large organizations. I wonder if transformative work design initiatives might meet with more success if they acknowledge this hypothesis and instead try to work with bureaucracy to shape it into it's most effective form.
I wonder if there's also something amorphous about "bureaucracy" and we will always perceive whatever governing system we have in an organisation as "slow and bureaucratic".
I absolutely agree that acknowledging the role of bureaucracy is more effective than trying to deny or disavow it.
It may be the case that innovative people (or Wardley-style Pioneers) will view anyone more structured than them as "bureaucracy". One of the things about bureaucracies is that they tend to opaque and secretive - you don't know what is going on inside the system and how quickly things are moving - which adds to the sense of inertia.
But Pioneers also tend to build on existing infrastructures. Part of Wardley's model is that what was once disruptive innovation becomes conservative infrastructure. Or as Prof. Joe Strummer so eloquently argued in his 1979 paper: "But I believe in this and it's been tested by research, He who f- nuns will later join the church".
Great post! I really appreciate the history and breakdown of the two different approaches.
I am also inclined to agree with your suspicion that bureaucracy cannot be eradicated from large organizations. I wonder if transformative work design initiatives might meet with more success if they acknowledge this hypothesis and instead try to work with bureaucracy to shape it into it's most effective form.
I wonder if there's also something amorphous about "bureaucracy" and we will always perceive whatever governing system we have in an organisation as "slow and bureaucratic".
I absolutely agree that acknowledging the role of bureaucracy is more effective than trying to deny or disavow it.
It may be the case that innovative people (or Wardley-style Pioneers) will view anyone more structured than them as "bureaucracy". One of the things about bureaucracies is that they tend to opaque and secretive - you don't know what is going on inside the system and how quickly things are moving - which adds to the sense of inertia.
But Pioneers also tend to build on existing infrastructures. Part of Wardley's model is that what was once disruptive innovation becomes conservative infrastructure. Or as Prof. Joe Strummer so eloquently argued in his 1979 paper: "But I believe in this and it's been tested by research, He who f- nuns will later join the church".