Don't Rock the Boat
Ancient Shores, Jack McDevitt
A bureaucrat abused Jack McDevitt when he was younger. Each of the books in which his characters interact with bureaucracies are case studies in the small-mindedness of people, which is amplified whenever they are embedded in a bureaucracy. No one is responsible for either failure or success. All that matters is that the waves are smoothed out so that the whole floating wreck keeps meandering along to the horizon.
McDevitt takes a terrific exception to the common cliched comedy of manners so often used to represent bureaucracy. The problem with making something a stock comic resort is that it ends up papering over and excusing the horrors that can be perpetrated in the service of bureaucracy. Sure, it can be funny (if not original), that someone gets shuttled from line to line at the DMV, university, hospital or bureaucracy de jour, finally ending up back at the initial window with the original indifferent and overworked office worker, but it's a story that masks the real dangers of bureaucracy. When no one is responsible, the only motivator for individuals from the top to bottom of an organization is what will cause them the least hassle. More to the point, individuals cannot be rewarded for productivity in such an environment because productivity is not a measurable entity in a vacuum of responsibility. Therefore the inverse quantity of caused hassle is the driving force for promotion, not productivity.
Bureaucracies combine the disdain of responsibility with another great flaw in the human psyche: the scantron subconscious. Our brains work on a multiple choice basis shoehorning everything into the predefined situational options, with no "fill in the blank" option provided. When you see a giant furry thing try to attack you in the middle of the night when you're out for a walk, your brain fits the existent evidence into either: a. a large dog, b. your asshole roommate in a gorilla suit or c. your imagination. Regardless of whether it is a full moon, or the thing runs away at the sight of your silver cross, a sane mind does not write in "d. a werewolf". Writing in one's own options is our best measure of both insanity and genius. A bureaucracy demands that the options be filled in with a rabid single mindedness. If your application to the DMV has some irregularity (like the fact that you don't already have a driver's license, but you can provide your Ugandan passport for proof of identity), it doesn't meet the easy options and the easiest way to keep from rocking the boat is just to casually drop your application overboard and into the shredder.
Now imagine a bureaucracy having to deal with something truly earth-moving, like the discovery of alien technology that will revolutionize everything about energy and manufacturing. That is essentially the question posed by McDevitt in Ancient Shores. A bureaucracy's response will be to shove that thing under the rug so fast that the rug gets rug burn. The horror is never caused by evil but by human mediocrity. The government doesn't try to destroy the most fantastic discovery in human history because of evil conspiracies or arcane power struggles, it does it because dealing with something so extraordinary is just a big hassle. The challenge to leaders is to break that attitude in bureaucracies, force accountability and vision.
A bureaucrat abused Jack McDevitt when he was younger. Each of the books in which his characters interact with bureaucracies are case studies in the small-mindedness of people, which is amplified whenever they are embedded in a bureaucracy. No one is responsible for either failure or success. All that matters is that the waves are smoothed out so that the whole floating wreck keeps meandering along to the horizon.
McDevitt takes a terrific exception to the common cliched comedy of manners so often used to represent bureaucracy. The problem with making something a stock comic resort is that it ends up papering over and excusing the horrors that can be perpetrated in the service of bureaucracy. Sure, it can be funny (if not original), that someone gets shuttled from line to line at the DMV, university, hospital or bureaucracy de jour, finally ending up back at the initial window with the original indifferent and overworked office worker, but it's a story that masks the real dangers of bureaucracy. When no one is responsible, the only motivator for individuals from the top to bottom of an organization is what will cause them the least hassle. More to the point, individuals cannot be rewarded for productivity in such an environment because productivity is not a measurable entity in a vacuum of responsibility. Therefore the inverse quantity of caused hassle is the driving force for promotion, not productivity.
Bureaucracies combine the disdain of responsibility with another great flaw in the human psyche: the scantron subconscious. Our brains work on a multiple choice basis shoehorning everything into the predefined situational options, with no "fill in the blank" option provided. When you see a giant furry thing try to attack you in the middle of the night when you're out for a walk, your brain fits the existent evidence into either: a. a large dog, b. your asshole roommate in a gorilla suit or c. your imagination. Regardless of whether it is a full moon, or the thing runs away at the sight of your silver cross, a sane mind does not write in "d. a werewolf". Writing in one's own options is our best measure of both insanity and genius. A bureaucracy demands that the options be filled in with a rabid single mindedness. If your application to the DMV has some irregularity (like the fact that you don't already have a driver's license, but you can provide your Ugandan passport for proof of identity), it doesn't meet the easy options and the easiest way to keep from rocking the boat is just to casually drop your application overboard and into the shredder.
Now imagine a bureaucracy having to deal with something truly earth-moving, like the discovery of alien technology that will revolutionize everything about energy and manufacturing. That is essentially the question posed by McDevitt in Ancient Shores. A bureaucracy's response will be to shove that thing under the rug so fast that the rug gets rug burn. The horror is never caused by evil but by human mediocrity. The government doesn't try to destroy the most fantastic discovery in human history because of evil conspiracies or arcane power struggles, it does it because dealing with something so extraordinary is just a big hassle. The challenge to leaders is to break that attitude in bureaucracies, force accountability and vision.
posted by stipe42 at
3:13 PM
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