Bureaucracy and unnecessary approvals kill flow

Very often bottlenecks in a process are caused by bureaucracy, and/or waiting for a decision or for unnecessary approvals. This is especially typical of bigger organizations, but what could be the reason behind it? Is there no-one who can make a decision by him/herself? Does everyone prefer to be on the safe side, saying that decisions are a shared responsibility? I’ve always wondered why there needs to be between 5 and 10 approvals for a salary increase, to hire someone, change a process, reduce inventory, make new approaches, start new training plans, headcount questions, appoint new suppliers, etc. Yes, a controlled process with necessary approvals is definitely needed but is it really necessary to delay the process just because no one would like to take the responsibility? Are those managers, leaders, supervisor and experts not in a position to responsibly take a decision?  Yes, there could be a control that an additional person or HR needs to approve any decision made, but why do so many different people from different departments have to approve one single decision? Most of them don’t have a clue what they are approving and simply sign the documents as requested.  I used to sign papers relating to trading which were brought to me by the finance department, and when I asked why the papers were brought to me in HR they said ‘’you are the person who is authorized to sign such things”. I had no idea what I was signing as I was not familiar with orders, customs, etc. but if I didn’t sign then the goods would have remained at customs… When I signed the payroll then of course it was OK, but it made no sense for me to sign documents relating to other departments, about which I knew absolutely nothing.

Bureaucracy generates a lot of unnecessary waste. Try to design systems to speed up the process instead slowing it down. Empower your staff to be able to make decisions and take responsibility for them. Having an approval process consisting of 10 people makes you wonder why an organization has leaders, managers, supervisor, experts, etc.  Does it really take 10 people to make a simple decision? Does the person at the top have time to understand each and every approval request? Are we wasting the time of the CEO and leadership team as well? What is the value-added activity here?

Do bigger companies necessarily need more bureaucracy? Let’s say the car market changes and everyone would like to buy grey cars. If it takes 3 months to finalize the decision and start producing cars in this color then you lose most of the potential customers who want the car immediately. Bureaucracy slows down the process and kills flow.

One of my favorite examples of waste is the recruitment process. Some companies have only 1 or 2 rounds of interviews within a cycle of 2 or 3 weeks, while others have 6 to 8 rounds within a cycle of 3 months. Are the contracts of those candidates who have only had 2 interviews more frequently terminated within the probation period than those who have undergone 8 interviews? Can you be 100% sure that the candidate is the perfect one? In my experience more interviews don’t necessarily add more certainty.  When I am looking for a new team member I can decide in 15 minutes whether he or she is the perfect candidate during the interview. One additional interview with a colleague, peer or direct manager could be good, but more than this is unnecessary. Yes, there are positions such as CEO or CFO where more interviews could be required, but in 90% of the cases we are hiring people for other positions. Conducting lots of unnecessary interviews generates lots of waste. Be conscious, it is not only a waste of your time but also of the time of all the interviewers, candidates and administrators. Have you ever counted how many hours this would be altogether? Just calculate the value of their salaries as well, and you will be shocked at the total amount of wasted time and money.

Bureaucracy can cause a company to lose a lot of things – projects, orders, talents, profit, employees, market share, candidates, money and resources, as we don’t recognize that we are throwing valuable time and money out of the window. Fast and flexible organizations can react and adopt changes quickly. Nowadays the world changes quickly just as the market and trends do, so be conscious when you establish approval processes and ask yourself:  is this really the best approach? Can we simplify it?  Re-evaluate your current processes as well.