President's Perspective
Bureaucracy Is A Pain!
I don't know anyone who hasn't complained about bureaucracy at one time or another. If it isn't the license bureau, it's the school system, the building permit system, the zoning commission, the utilities board, or whatever agency one must deal with. It seems that the larger the organization is, the more bureaucratic it becomes. Some parts of the government have made bureaucracy into a virtual art form! If there is any governmental agency, at any level, which cannot be considered a bureaucracy, then I haven't dealt with it yet.
However, the government doesn't have a corner on the market when it comes to bureaucracy. You may not realize it, but bureaucracy is an inherent part of organizing anything. The minute any rule is made, a bureaucracy is created to administer it. Most of us think of bureaucracy as being the people we are forced to deal with, but in reality, it is not the people who are the bureaucracy, but the system of rules which govern the actions of those people.
Part of the problem is that most bureaucracies become self-perpetuating. As any organization grows, it finds itself needing more and more rules to govern itself. As more rules are created, the people entrusted to administer the rules become less and less willing—or able—to make decisions not covered by the rules. Instead, they hand you off to some other department, figuring that it might have a rule to apply to your problem. When that department doesn't have a rule—well, you get the idea.
Eventually, you either find someone willing to stick his or her neck out and make a decision, or you complain to someone further up the bureaucratic chain who usually can only solve your problem by proposing another—you guessed it—rule! This sounds much more simple than it actually is, for the person who can help is forced to deal with a whole lot more bureaucracy in order to get the new rule in place. Virtually every organization has rules that must be followed in order to make new rules!
The Academy of Model Aeronautics is certainly not immune to this phenomenon and, in fact, some would say that the AMA has nearly perfected it. As president, most members assume that I do not have to deal with the bureaucracy, and can simply snap my fingers and get things done. Well, I regret to inform you of this, but I do have to deal with it, probably in many more ways than the members do.
Quite often a member will contact me with a problem that he blames on either the staff or "the bureaucracy," and the problem is really the result of technological "advancement." I got a letter just today (in early March) from a frustrated member who is really upset that the staff hasn't been able to act on his "simple" request. It's not an unreasonable request, and it appears deceptively simple. He wrote that he doesn't have time to read Model Aviation magazine, and wants his subscription sent to a particular school library.
Simple enough, it would seem, until you try to do it. The computer system we have doesn't have a mechanism to redirect a magazine to anyone other than the member. When the system was designed, it wasn't a circumstance that anyone considered! After thinking about it for quite a while, I think I have figured out a way to "outsmart" the system and accomplish this, but I am not sure if it will work without upsetting the accounting system. With an "integrated" system such as we have, sometimes trying to outsmart the system will have unwanted consequences elsewhere. To even try to solve this member's problem, I'll have to deal with at least three levels of bureaucracy, but that is the nature of organizations that have proper safeguards.
While it is frustrating to have to deal with the bureaucracy, the alternative is to expose the organization to criticism based on its insufficient safeguards to protect it. In the last Executive Council meeting, someone asked if we had a policy requiring competitive bidding on all purchases. We don't, and it was pointed out that the government requires such a policy on all purchases exceeding a certain amount. Well, we aren't the government, and I don't consider the government an example of fiscal efficiency, but now that the subject has come up, we might just have to consider it. After all, it's just one more layer of bureaucracy!
Till Next Month,
Dave Brown AMA President dbrown@dbproducts.com
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
