Almost 200 years ago, biologist Charles Darwin taught us that organisms change if there is sufficient evolutionary pressure. Penguins traded wings for more swimming-friendly flippers as their food supply became richer at depth, octopuses lost their exoskeletons to be more nimble and evasive as new marine predators appeared, and even bedbugs developed thicker shells and more resilient nerve cells when confronted with DDT and other insecticides (yes, yuck, but true). In short, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
In business, this Darwinian rule seems to be equally valid. Companies evolve with the ebb and flow of competitive tides and other externalities they face, and when the waves come crashing down on one type of organizational practice, another typically emerges. When new generations of workers are introduced, new values and cultures are gradually delineated; when technology develops, decision-making processes soon find themselves overhauled; and when global supply chains clog, companies change the nuts and bolts of their logistics as if in a pitstop. To survive as an organized unit, we tend to evolve how we approach things according to external circumstances — not at all unlike the penguins, octopuses, and bedbugs of our planet.
Yet one organizational feature that has proved uncommonly resistant to evolutionary pressures is bureaucracy. Numerous authors have at one time or another loudly denounced the traditional, bureaucratic way of structuring organizations, introducing a barrage of modernizing terms and models such as holocracy,1 agile structuring,2 adhocracy,3 humanocracy,4 teal organizing,5 rendanheyi,6 and self-managing organizations.7 Yet study after study has shown that most companies are still structured as bureaucratically as they were decades ago.8 Notwithstanding the many changes today’s organizations face in their competitive environment, it seems bureaucracy is binding — and organizations tend to stick to it, for better or worse.
So what is happening here? Why are we desperately holding onto our wings when flippers would serve us better? Why are we all collectively retaining something when it renders us increasingly out of touch with our environment? Put differently: Why is it so hard to do away with bureaucracy?
Over the years, we have seen organizations of all sizes struggle with this question. Based on our observations and the countless conversations we have had with the people who work in them, we found several reasons why bureaucracies continue to be binding.
Binding reason No. 1: Because bureaucracy is about power. While bureaucracy often seems a rational and faceless exercise — addressing the somewhat dreary question of how activities are directed to achieve the company’s goals — the reality is few organizational features are more politicized and power-driven than a bureaucratic structure. Bureaucracy spells out who controls what kind of resources and, as a consequence, who controls which people. As a result, when companies try to switch gears from bureaucracy toward experimental pyramid-busting structures such as rendanheyi or humanocracy, they typically end up butting heads with the people who see their former powerbase tarnished and threatened. And more often than not, such political headbutting drains the organization’s capacity to introduce or sustain structural change.
Binding reason No. 2: Because bureaucracy is about routine. One thing we have learned over the years is that bureaucracy offers a sense of safety and assurance that few other organizational features can match. The reason for that is, at its core, bureaucracy is the very thing that adorns organizational life with ornaments of routine, habit and predictability. Neatly spelling out a company’s internal rules of engagement, a bureaucratic structure gives people a blueprint of what their general behavior is going to look like tomorrow. Contrary to today’s popular narratives of adaptability and innovativeness, such blueprints are invaluable for human beings: Because we are all genetically hardwired to latch onto routines to minimize the amount of energy we spend, they offer us a kind of behavioral comfort and optimization that we all unconsciously covet. Bureaucracy is a prime source of boring consistency — and for that, we value it.
Binding reason No. 3: Because bureaucracy is about identity. While most Western individuals tend to believe they are personas based on their own internal characteristics, studies have shown that identities are much more relative — that is, we are who we are not only based on our own personal quirks but also on the interactions we have with others. In organizations, such interactions seldom occur freely but are largely predetermined by their structure: As structure spells out lines of engagement, it defines who we relate to, report to, and interact with on a daily basis. Consequently, when organizations try to reconceive that circle of reports, people tend to respond quite drastically. Bureaucratic structures strictly define the organization, but to a larger extent, they also define the identities and self-image of the people within it.
Binding reason No. 4: Because bureaucracy is about legitimacy. Ask anyone on the street to draw what a company looks like, and odds are high they will sketch out some form of the classic hierarchical chart — think boxes and lines, with some individuals being literally higher up than others. More than any other aspect of organizational life, classic bureaucratic structures are deeply embedded within the common psyche. Generally, this implies that when any group of people wants to be perceived as representing a legitimate company, it is nudged to organize in a way that aligns with this popular belief. This is the structural version of a catch-22: While we might all crave our companies to introduce structures that are more suited to future challenges than bureaucratic ones, we simultaneously deny our companies access to such structures by continuously gravitating to a way that is deeply rooted in the past.
Binding reason No. 5: Because bureaucracy is about socialization. When crafting organizations, few aspects seem as heavily socialized as the notion of bureaucracy. By the time we make it to corporate life, we have already been exposed to bureaucracy in just about any social context we have previously participated in. Schools and universities? Organized from students to presidents. Sports groups? From peewee teams to premier leagues. Scouts and pathfinders? From cubs to leaders. The point is, from a very early age onward, we tend to bathe human beings in the pools of hierarchy and bureaucratic order. We are socialized to expect bureaucracy and therefore feel comfortable with it as a result.
These five forces make bureaucracy deeply inhibitive of change. It does not mean, however, that the task is entirely impossible. While there may be continuous debate about what exactly is the right model for organizations, much more relies on companies’ ability to take productive steps of putting such a model to work. Across the many companies that have been trying to make a change — Haier, Buurtzorg, ING, Spotify, and Novartis, to name a few — we have seen a way forward to penetrate the binding forces and experiment with new ways of working. What follows is a set of actions that opens up new possibilities for organizational effectiveness, as well as a guide for those willing to be leaders of models that are more attuned to the world of challenges organizations face today.
Action 1: See it for yourself. In most successful cases of organizations venturing beyond traditional bureaucratic models, we found company leaders were initially inspired by what did and did not work elsewhere. While you can read all you want about structuring your organization in a non-bureaucratic way, it tends to be one of those things you just have to experience to understand how it can make an actual difference.: Just like it is hard to explain how falling in love can change your life, conveying the logic of dropping bureaucracy typically seems hard to do without an actual experience. And as with love, the solution for finding new structure resides in opening up. For example, try to visit an organization that has already made a successful push for a “teal” way of structuring or one that has fruitfully implemented an “unbossed” environment. Observe, listen, and immerse yourself. Without doing so, efforts to remove bureaucracy from your organization will prove as daunting as explaining color to a blind person.
Action 2: Practice makes perfect. While a structural overhaul away from bureaucracy may sound like bulldozering the lot and starting from scratch, we found this is not necessarily true. In most successful cases of structural change we have witnessed, leaders initially limited their actions to a pilot program, where a single unit or geographical location served as a guinea pig. Such a pilot approach allowed leaders to build experience with the challenges and limitations that the new structure would inevitably introduce, without being paralyzed by the sheer scale of it all. Additionally, on the receiving end, launching a structural change in a piecemeal way allowed people to slowly build some level of comfort and trust in the new organizational backbone. In sum, when trying to rebuild the organizational house, practice does seem to make perfect.
Action 3: Tailor-made fits the best. One of the biggest mistakes we have seen leaders make is adhering to a new structural approach in a zealous way, without questioning how the theory should be interpreted or amended to align with the context. For example, while the fundamentals of agile structuring may sound appealing in theory, it might be that your company’s customer portfolio does not allow a total overhaul. Similarly, while the idea of structuring your organization in the self-managing micro-enterprises professed by rendaheyi might work for some parts of your company, it might be that others will find their added value completely jeopardized when organizing in this way. The point is that successful change leaders remain attentive to what parts of the theory work in their company and what parts do not. Don’t try to stuff someone in a James Bond suit when that person has 10 pounds on good-old 007 — for, if anything, tailor-made fits the best.
Action 4: Drop the BS and talk straight. One of the most effective ways in which leaders can kill a move away from bureaucracy before even getting started using buzzwords: squads, tribes, coaches, wholeness, nodes, users, and so forth. While the use of new terminology might earn you some credit when speaking up in the boardroom or addressing those brand-new consultants your company has solicited, we found it to be often harmful when used anywhere beyond this limited social context. This does not mean the content of these words is necessarily flawed — on the contrary. What it means is we have seen people typically respond badly to something framed in a way that does not speak to them. Try to trim away the verbal fat and talk straight; explain things as you would to people on the street or in your family. It will serve your journey out of bureaucracy much more than any rhetorical bow tie ever will.
Action 5: Involve the full company. When leaders aim to challenge the traditional bureaucratic model, we have often seen them take on a self-absorbed attitude — that of the lone wolf, who must almost single-handedly guide its pack through the desolate blizzards of winter. As structure is arguably one of the core features of any organization, leaders commonly think a structural overhaul is best planned in the isolated safety of the boardroom, where the noise and humdrum of everyday organizational life is muffled. Yet, far too often, we have seen that this approach renders poor results. Because structure is so foundational to the efforts and interactions of all organizational members, gaining sustainable buy-in for changing it requires the upfront involvement of a representative selection of people. Growing new bones is tricky, to say the least, and to do it successfully, you need the entire body to cooperate.
Together, these actions and attitudes can help you break loose from the limitations of the bureaucratic ethos. While uprooting such a deeply ingrained system of organizing and structuring a collective effort is a formidable challenge, there is much to be gained: the benefits of focusing more on effectiveness than efficiency, more on knowledge and inputs than titles and fiefdoms, and more on flexibility and adaptability than sticking to comforting but unproductive routines. After all, if penguins, octopuses, and bedbugs can do it, why can’t you?
Other articles in this series
Brave New World Revisited: 5 Trends Reshaping Business Practices
Restoring Trust in Management: A Way Forward
About the authors
Bart De Keyser is an assistant professor (i.e., lecturer) in strategy, innovation, and entrepreneurship at the University of Sydney Business School. He holds a PhD in management from the University of Antwerp and has worked as a researcher at HEC Montreal and Columbia Business School. De Keyser’s work focuses on organizational and managerial transformations and has been published in several top-ranking academic journals.
Todd Jick is a leading expert in leadership and organizational change. He has had a long career in both academic and consulting work in this field and is faculty director of the Reuben Mark Initiative for Organizational Character and Leadership at Columbia Business School. He was a professor at Harvard Business School for 10 years and a visiting professor of organizational behavior and human resource management at INSEAD and London Business School. Jick has built several top-rated courses at Columbia Business School, receiving the Singhvi Prize for Teaching Excellence twice. In May 2024, Jick was honored with Columbia University’s 2024 Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching. The award recognizes his commitment to teaching excellence and is given annually to outstanding members of the faculty whose pedagogy fosters critical thinking and inspires students to engage the quest for knowledge as a value and as a craft. His textbook, Managing Change, has been the leading offering in the field for the past 15 years, and his more than 100 cases have been among the top sellers in case clearinghouses.
Footnotes
- B.J. Robertson, Holacracy: The new management system for a rapidly changing world (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2015).
- Y.L. Doz and M. Kosonen, “The new deal at the top,” Harvard Business Review 85, no. 6 (2007): 98-104.
- J. Birkinshaw and J. Ridderstråle, “Adhocracy for an agile age,” Organization Science 22, no. 5(2010): 1286-1296.
- G. Hamel and M. Zanini, Humanocracy: Creating organizations as amazing as the people inside them (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press, 2020).
- F. Laloux, Reinventing organizations: A guide to creating organizations inspired by the next stage of human consciousness (Millis, MA: Nelson Parker, 2014).
- J.G. Frynas, M.J. Mol, and K. Mellahi, “Management innovation made in China: Haier’s Rendanheyi,” California Management Review 61, no. 1 (2018): 71-93.
- M.Y. Lee and A.C. Edmondson, “Self-managing organizations: Exploring the limits of less-hierarchical organizing,” Research in Organizational Behavior 37 (2017): 35-58.
- G. Hamel and M. Zanini, “More of us are working in big bureaucratic organizations than ever before,” Harvard Business Review, July 5, 2016, https://hbr.org/2016/07/more-of-us-are-working-in-big-bureaucratic-organizations-than-ever-before.
M. Reeves, E. Wesselink, and K. Whitaker, “The end of bureaucracy, again?” BCG Henderson Institute, July 27, 2020, www.bcg.com/publications/2020/changing-business-environment-pushing-end-to-bureaucracy.
K. Caprino, “Why organizations are drowning in bureaucracy and nonsense and how common sense can change that,” Forbes, February 11, 2021, www.forbes.com/sites/kathycaprino/2021/02/11/why-organizations-are-drowning-in-bureaucracy-and-nonsense-and-how-common-sense-can-change-that/?sh=236d8f1b605e