Do Not Turn Every Small Mistake into a Rule: Bureaucracy Grows by Accumulation

Managers commonly assume that every incident requires collective reflection and a policy to prevent recurrence. Yet extremely unlikely incidents do not deserve overreaction, even when caused by an employee’s mistake. In 2010, 37signals founders Jason Fried and David Hansson published Rework about entrepreneurship and management. One argument is that you should not respond to every mistake with an elaborate corrective policy. That merely turns the mistake into a scar and makes the company more bureaucratic. The right response is to tell the employee it was a mistake, and leave it there. #萬萬沒想到 ---- Robin: ‘This is common. When I worked in underwriting, many rules arose from a particular past incident, followed by a new requirement or supplementary explanation. Underwriting regulations and cautions kept multiplying. The biggest problem with many management systems is that they are rarely reviewed or reduced, but keep accumulating because new things happen every day. More rules look like protection against misconduct, yet create greater bureaucracy, eventually eliminating flexibility or slowing action. Government agencies are among the most bureaucratic and duplicative organizational designs. Concern about responsibility and the desire to spread risk produce numerous procedures, rules, and frameworks. Paperwork grows; everyone seems to have endless work and overtime, while the value produced remains relatively limited.’