Conversation

Bureaucracy at its best is the art of ensuring work never flows backwards in a system where nobody can see very far, by overengineering the output at every stage. It’s the essence of good fat.
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You bundle in everything the rest of the work chain could possibly want so it doesn’t come back to your desk. This is no mean achievement. Complex systems *want* to develop feedback loops and keeping them feedforward without knowing exactly what the forward path needs is hard
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So you solve by over-communicating. Ask for everything pass on everything. There is a world of sophistication in the idea of a “supporting document.”
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Dunno how I missed good bureaucracy as the epitome of fat thinking in my writing on the topic. Gonna finally read the Wilson bureaucracy book and become a Deep State stan. Windmills of the Gods.
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People think all bureaucracy is bad because they fetishize the lean/private sector that solves for speed and growth over survivability. But solving for survivability is legit. You take 1 step instead of 10 but you survive 9/10 of futures instead of 1/10
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It will be fun to troll my startup buddies who are all firmly in TINAT mode: There Is No Alternative to Thiel. Sad failure of imagination to not ask whether an institutional form 2000 years old might not actually know a thing or two.
Yes And No Yes Minister GIF
GIF
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