[August 14, 2016] A good friend of mine, retired military, was at the U.S. Veterans Administration last month trying to straighten out his disability compensation. It appears that he was overpaid and rightly he must pay back any overpayments. He is anxious to do so because it’s the right thing to do and owes just a few hundred dollars. But the VA bureaucracy is getting in the way of making it happen in a timely and accurate fashion.
“The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline.” ― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t
I’ve had personal and up close dealings with one of the largest bureaucracies in the world, the U.S. military. I always wondered why they wanted everything in writing and in triplicate. Some of the best and most productive companies in the world have relatively flat organizations and not so much paperwork. Although it’s not a good idea to compare a successful commercial venture with a military organization, there are certainly some parallels that should be studied.
Anyone who’s been to a Department of Motor Vehicles or to a state-run Vehicle Inspection center knows about the absurd level of paperwork; rigidly enforced and inflexible and similar to the military. In my personal experience, those who work the front lines of those entities act as if you are bothering them and know they are the gatekeeper for what you need. Those who work there would rarely survive in a commercial company that has the right to hire and fire people at will.
I mentioned in an earlier post about a high-ranking civilian government employee who was functionally illiterate, had no college degree (required), no security clearance (required), and regularly disobeyed the commanding officer. When her egregious behavior was finally brought to the attention of the head of military civilians, the unit commander was told that it best to just give her a “warning letter.” Anywhere else, she would have been immediately fired.
James Collins, author of Good to Great, believes that bureaucracies are designed to allow organizations to function at a minimum standard while employing some of the least competent employees. In his book he talks about government agencies that are among the worst. Of course, the U.S. military (including the VA) is one of those that attracts some of the least proficient and unemployable civilians and uniformed personnel; unmotivated, intellectually lazy, with attitude problems, and a gatekeeper-mentality.
It’s a miracle that our military can function at all. The reason I think the U.S. military is so respected and capable of carrying out its mission is due to the exceptional leadership it employs. The military is just another large government organization that needs lots of people and its leaders fear kickback if they fire people. So they increase the level of bureaucracy to the point anyone can do the lower level jobs.
My friend was told at the regional VA center where that as long as he furnishes a letter from his “commander” – documentation not required – that it can say just about anything and they will accept it without question. The VA will file the letter and he can be on his way. Typical bureaucracy … he could easily cheat the system as many people do but he will not.
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