Frustrates me. Unbelievably. Well, what on Earth are you working at the World Bank for then, you might ask? It would be a good question.
I would love to spill the beans on the exciting administrative hiccups and hurdles that have confronted my team and I over the course of the last couple of weeks, but it's pretty confidential (and that is as exciting as it will ever sound). In my foggy youth of more than a year ago, I was more than happy, nay, excited, to dive wholeheartedly into the machinations and workings of the great World Bank steamroller. Increasingly, I am realizing the full extent to which bureaucracy can stifle an important organizational mission.
At the same time, it is truly the heart of the development world. Almost all of the "old era" development institutions (you know, the acronym alphabet soup: ADB, IDB, DFID, EBRD, AfDB, USAID...) are hung with an enormous bureaucracy whose legacy seems for the most part inerasable. If I'm going to be stuck with bureaucracy, why not be stuck with the best, right?
2 comments:
Shane,
You have identified one of life's great tensions. Small organizations can be entrepreneurial and nimble, but generally only have impact in niches. Large organizations have the capability for significant impact, but the possibilities and their timeliness are oftened muted by internal bureaucracy. In both cases, strong leadership can break an organization out of the usual pattern.
Regards,
Kevin Jenkins
Kevin, I think you hit the nail on the head. As you point out, I don't believe that an "ideal" organization, either in structure or size, exists as a model to which businesses should aspire. Rather, businesses require strong and consciously flexible leadership to succeed. It is amazing to observe in the history of commerce the number of businesses that once enjoyed enormous success but which eventually failed because of a failure to respond to evolving markets and environments. Understanding that change is a constant necessity, and embracing that, is the only way of ensuring an organization's continued effectiveness.
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