Having grown up in a family business, my earliest exposure to corporate life was often baffling. I remember the first time I presented some work in a client’s office 30 years ago. He suggested some small edits, and asked that they be enacted before he presented the work to his superior, who was called Dave. ‘I’ve got a window in Dave’s diary next Wednesday to present the work on up to him, so I’d like to have the changes made by then.’
Fair enough, I thought. Perhaps Dave was flying in from Chicago. Or maybe Dave was a highly elusive figure who only appeared in the building on Wednesdays during the hours of darkness. We agreed to the changes and I left his office. There was another, almost identical office next door and a man was sitting in it alone staring absentmindedly at a screen. On the door was a nameplate which read ‘Dave’.
What seems efficient to an organisation may be infuriating to an outsider. Think of the last time you bought a house
‘Eh? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to present to both people simultaneously?’ I asked my older, wiser colleague. ‘That would save a week and avoid having one person’s comments contradict the other’s,’ she sighed. Clearly she was more versed in the world of corporate etiquette than I was. ‘I know, but it never works like that.’
We often associate bureaucracy with the public sector, or Soviet communism, but it is everywhere. It often emerges unintentionally because any process is typically designed from an organisation’s perspective. Yet what seems efficient to an organisation may be infuriating to an outsider. Think of the last time you bought a house: even if your surveyor, solicitor and estate agent are all perfectly industrious, the process is torturous.
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