Bureaucracy - Stifling or Enabling

Talent density versus the complexity of the construction business or project is what determines the level of bureaucracy required for sustainable growth.

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Leadership Tools: Bureaucracy, Stifling or Enabling.

Every contractor will face a dilution of their talent density over the next 15 years before things begin to improve.  The competitive advantage will go to those contractors who master the following balance:

  • Attracting new top-level talent to the organization raising the overall talent density level.
  • Developing talent to increase the density level.
  • Adding in the right levels of enabling bureaucracy to optimize team performance given the inevitable dilution of talent density.  

Bureaucracy is like stress where too much OR too little is bad.  Your role in leadership is finding that optimum balance.   


Further Reading:


“Bureaucracy constitutes the most efficient and rational way in which one can organize the human activity and that systematic processes and organized hierarchies are necessary to maintain order, maximize efficiency, and eliminate favoritism.

On the other hand, unfettered bureaucracy as a threat to individual freedom, with the potential of trapping individuals in an impersonal "iron cage" of rule-based, rational control.” - Max Weber; German Sociologist


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About D. Brown Management
We are a management advisory firm working with contractors across the United States. We love the construction industry and believe it is an integral part of the backbone of our country.
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