or reframed into familiar terms the organization can understand.
When it becomes difficult to identify a promising suspect, a second popular option is to blame the bureaucracy. Things go haywire because organizations are stifled by rules and red tape or, as in the Trump White House, the opposite—chaos resulting from a lack of clear goals, authority, roles, and rules. The solution, then, is either to tighten up, loosen up … or pay the price.
By this reasoning, tighter financial controls could have prevented the subprime mortgage meltdown of 2008. The tragedy of 9/11 could have been thwarted if agencies had had better protocols for spotting such a terrorist attack. But piling on rules and regulations is a direct route to bureaucratic rigidity. Rules can inhibit freedom and flexibility, stifle initiative, and generate reams of red tape. The Commission probing the causes of 9/11 concluded: “Imagination is not a gift associated with bureaucracy.” When things become too tight, the solution is to “free up” the system so red tape and rigid rules don't stifle creativity and bog things down. An enduring storyline in popular films is the free spirit who triumphs in the end over silly rules and mindless bureaucrats (examples include the cult classics Office Space and The Big Lebowski). But many organizations vacillate endlessly between too loose and too tight.
A third fallacy attributes problems to thirsting for power. Enron collapsed, you could say, because key executives were more interested in getting rich and expanding their turf than in advancing the company's best interests. This view sees organizations as jungles teeming with predators and prey. Victory goes to the more adroit, or the more treacherous. You need to play the game better than your opponents—and watch your back.
Each of these three perspectives contains a kernel of truth but oversimplifies a knottier reality. Blaming people points to the perennial importance of individual responsibility. People who are rigid, lazy, bumbling, or greedy do contribute to some of the problems we see in organizations. But condemning individuals often distracts us from seeing system weaknesses and offers few workable options. If, for example, the problem is someone's abrasive or pathological personality, what do we do? Even psychiatrists find it hard to alter deeply entrenched character disorders, and firing everyone with a less‐than‐ideal personality is rarely a viable option. Training can go only so far in ensuring semi‐flawless individual performance.
The blame‐the‐bureaucracy perspective starts from a reasonable premise: organizations exist to achieve specific goals. They usually work better when strategies, goals, and policies are clear (but not excessive), jobs are well defined (but not constricting), control systems are in place (but not oppressive), and employees behave prudently (but not callously). If organizations always operated that way, they would presumably work a lot better than most do. This perspective is better at explaining how organizations should work than why they often fall short. Managers who cling to logic and procedures become discouraged and frustrated when confronted by intractable irrational forces. Year after year, we witness the introduction of new control systems, hear of new ways to reorganize, and are dazzled by emerging management strategies, methods, and gurus. Yet, as in the case of the Wuhan cover‐up, old problems persist, seemingly immune to every rational cure we devise. As March and Simon point out, subterranean features of organizations become salient when threatened. Like blaming individuals, dog‐eat‐dog logic offers a plausible analysis of almost anything that goes wrong. People both seek and despise power, but find it a convenient way to explain problems. Within hours of the 9/11 terror attacks, a senior FBI official called Richard Clarke, America's counterterrorism czar, to tell him that many of the terrorists were known members of Al Quaeda.
“How the fuck did they get on board then?” Clarke exploded.
“Hey, don't shoot the messenger. CIA forgot to tell us about them.”
In the context of its chronic battles with the CIA, the FBI was happy to throw a rival under the bus: “We could have stopped the terrorists if CIA had done their job.”
The tendency to blame what goes wrong on people, bureaucracy, or thirst for power is part of our deeply embedded mental wiring. They provide quick and easy explanations that enable us to feel we understand when we don't. There's much more to understanding a complex situation than assigning blame. Certain universal peculiarities of organizations make them especially difficult to understand or decipher.
PECULIARITIES OF ORGANIZATIONS
Human organizations can be exciting and challenging places. That's how they are often depicted in management texts, corporate annual reports, and fanciful management thinking. But, as many people find, they can also be deceptive, confusing, and demoralizing. It is a mistake to assume that organizations are either snake pits or rose gardens (Schwartz, 1986). Managers need to recognize characteristics of life at work that create opportunities for the wise as well as hidden traps for the unwary. A case from the public sector provides a typical example:
When Bosses Rush In
Helen Demarco arrived in her office to discover a news item from the local paper. The headline read, “Osborne Announces Plan.” Paul Osborne had arrived two months earlier as Amtran's new chief executive. His mandate was to “revitalize, cut costs, and improve efficiency.”
After 20 years, Demarco had achieved a senior management position at the agency. She had little contact with Osborne, but her boss reported to him. Demarco and her colleagues had been waiting to learn what the new chief had in mind. She was startled as she read the newspaper account. Osborne's plan made technical assumptions directly related to her area of expertise. “He might be a change agent,” she thought, “but he doesn't know much about our technology.” She immediately saw the new plan's fatal flaws. “If he tries to implement this, it'll be the worst management mistake since the Edsel.”
Two days later, Demarco and her colleagues received a memo instructing them to form a task force to work on the revitalization plan. When the group convened, everyone agreed the new proposal was, at best, crazy.
“What do we do?” someone asked.
“Why don't we just tell him it won't work?” said one hopeful soul.
“He's already gone public! You want to tell him his new baby is ugly?”
“Not me. Besides, I've heard, he already thinks a lot of us are deadwood. If we tell him it's no good, he'll just think we're defensive.”
“Well, we can't go ahead with it. It'll never work and we'd be throwing away money.”
“That's true,” said Demarco thoughtfully. “But what if we tell him we're conducting a study of how to implement his plan?”
Demarco's innovative suggestion produced smiles around the room and received overwhelming approval. The group informed a delighted Osborne that they were moving ahead on the “implementation study” and expected excellent results. They got a substantial budget to support their “research.” They did not mention their real purpose––to buy time and find a way to minimize the damage without alienating the boss.
Over time, the group assembled a lengthy technical report, filled with graphs, tables, and nearly impenetrable administrative jargon. The report offered two options. Option A, Osborne's original plan, was presented as technically challenging and well beyond anything Amtran could afford. Option B, billed as a “modest descaling” of the original plan, was projected as a more cost‐effective alternative.
When Osborne pressed the group on the huge dollar disparity between the two proposals, he received a barrage of complicated cost‐benefit projections and inscrutable technical terms. Hidden in a dense fog was the reality
