Goodbye Bureaucracy, Hello Common Sense

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Business, Hbr, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Strategy, Business/management, Management, Communication, Harvard, Entrepreneurship, Business/marketing, Leadership, Marketing, Finance, Economics, Teams

4.3 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2021

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

Martin Lindstrom, founder and chairman of Lindstrom Company, says that many companies are still held back by doing things the way they've always done them, or failing to break down bureaucracy. For Lindstrom, it's not just about getting away from bureaucratic norms for the sake of innovation, but because so many things workers do each and every day don't actually make much sense. He suggests workers, leaders, and organizations consider ways in which processes can be improved - and the ways these new processes can improve life for everyone. And he argues that companies should actually devote a team or department to making sure common sense is used throughout the organization. Lindstrom is the author of the book "The Ministry of Common Sense: How to Eliminate Bureaucratic Red Tape, Bad Excuses, and Corporate BS."

Transcript

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0:00.0	How do you navigate gender in your workplace?
0:04.0	HBR's fan favorite podcast Women at Work is back with personal stories, the newest research,
0:09.6	and practical advice on navigating divorce, disability, and career failures.
0:14.0	Listen for free to H.B.
0:16.0	Women at Work wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the H-Bere Ideacast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Allison Beard. After the year we've all had with such huge disruptions to the way we do work,
0:48.6	a lot of leaders and especially employees don't really want to go back to business as usual.
0:54.0	People are thinking about how to improve organizational life,
0:57.0	and one way we can do that is by breaking down bureaucracy.
1:01.0	Do you have rules and regulation that make it a lot harder to get things done or get
1:04.9	slowed down by over-the-top compliance concerns, confusing technology, too many meetings?
1:11.2	Even worse, do you make your customers jump through crazy hoops?
1:15.0	So many businesses are set up in ways that don't make sense for how human beings actually
1:18.7	think, act, and behave.
1:20.8	And this lack of empathy for workers, for consumers, for people stands in the way of productivity and success.
1:27.0	Today's gas wants us all to declare war on bureaucracy and bring back common sense. Martin Lindstrom is the founder and
1:34.7	chairman of Lindstrom Company and the author of the book Ministry of Common
1:38.6	Sense how to eliminate bureaucratic red tape that excuses and corporate BS Obviously no one likes bureaucracy, you know we all want our organizations to be more user-friendly and efficient.
2:05.8	Why do companies have such a hard time making that happen?
2:09.7	This thing comes with age.
2:11.5	The bigger a company becomes, the older it becomes, and the more layers it has,
2:17.2	the more bureaucracy you will see coming into the organization.
2:20.3	And bureaucracy really is the lack of common sense or what I call nonsense.
	...

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