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The Delicate Art of Bureaucracy: Digital Transformation with the Monkey, the Razor, and the Sumo Wrestler Kindle Edition

by Mark Schwartz Mark Schwartz (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
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Mark Schwartz, author of leadership classics A Seat at the Table and The Art of Business Value, reveals a new (empowering) model for the often soul-shattering, frustrating, Kafkaesque nightmare we call bureaucracy.


Through humor, a healthy dose of history and philosophy, and real-life examples from his days as a government bureaucrat, Schwartz shows IT leaders (and the whole of business) how to master the ways of the Monkey, the Razor, and the Sumo Wrestler to create a lean, learning, and enabling bureaucracy.


For anyone frustrated by roadblocks, irritated the business can't move fast enough, or suffering under the weight of crushing procedures, this book is for you. No matter your role, you need a playbook for bureaucracy. This is it. With this playbook, you can wield bureaucracy as a superpower and bust through it at the same time

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  1. Print length
    378 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    IT Revolution Press
  5. Publication date
    October 13, 2020
  6. File size
    4494 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Mark Schwartz turns the tables on bureaucracy, offering a practical guide to stripping out a labyrinth of rules and replacing them with simplicity, ease, and automation. His version of a benevolent bureaucracy paves the path for digital transformation and facilitates creativity and innovation.” -- Kimberly Jonson, COO, Fannie Mae

“Bureaucracy has never been discussed in such an entertaining and educational way before. Learn how to clean out the organizational ‘scar tissue' that is slowing you down.” -- Adrian Cockcroft, former VP of Amazon Sustainability Architecture

“As someone that has been a cog in large, faceless corporations, I found bureaucracy stifling enough to abandon the heavy-handed rules and processes of large enterprise for the startup world. But even startups can become victims of senseless and unbending rituals. I discovered that bureaucracy has no preferred host. You may not come to love bureaucracy, but you will appreciate the wisdom in Mark's sage advice. In his battles with the Leviathan that is the USCIS, he brings levity and plenty of Moby Dick references as he deftly avoids the traps set by the devilish MD-102 by channeling the ways of the Monkey, the Razor, and the Sumo Wrestler and become a force for positive change.” -- Mark Birch, Founder, Enterprise Sales Forum; Founder DEV.BIZ.OPS

“Mark is to bureaucracy as Sun-Tzu is to the art of war. Read this book to capitalize on the good intended from bureaucracy and have the scissors you always hoped for to reshape it to be enabling, learning, and lean. Leverage the weight of bureaucracy to your advantage like a champion organizational Sumo wrestler.” -- Jamie Scott Berniker, Executive Director, Corporate Development, global bank

“Bureaucracy has long been a major impediment to transformation. With his usual style of complementing his progressive thinking with a variety of literary references and wit, Mark provides an engaging, insightful, and balanced view on a topic that could easily make one's eyes bleed! In this book you will find a practical guide to busting bureaucracy and turning it into a force for good, all while staying true to the modern techniques of Agile and DevOps―with the help of a Monkey, a Razor, and a Sumo Wrestler.” -- Keith Madsen, SVP, Cloud and Advanced Technology, Bank of America

“Mark Schwartz turns the tables on bureaucracy, offering a practical guide to stripping out a labyrinth of rules and replacing them with simplicity, ease, and automation. His version of a benevolent bureaucracy paves the path for digital transformation and facilitates creativity and innovation.” -- Kimberly Johnson, COO, Fannie Mae

“The (Delicate) Art of Bureaucracy is so creative, clever, and enlightening, it will help me remove digital transformation headwinds for years to come. It's a must read for government and business leaders as they embark on digital transformation. It will make you a better digital leader by giving you the knowledge to use bureaucracy as a digital accelerator, and it belongs on your office desk today.” -- Chris Radich, VP Digital Strategy, Salesforce

“My brain continues to turn around quantum bureaucracy. How to get the right amount of it at the right time and in the right place, but no more and not there unless you look. Maybe Schrodinger's Bureaucracy is something I need to work on and think about…Great read, and I'm so thankful to Mark for writing this book to reform bureaucracy. With his insight into razor-bearing sumo monkeys, we can progress toward a more modern way of managing. Like Jonah, I felt trapped with no way to determine my own direction. Mark provides great tools for guiding the whale.” -- Josh Seckel, Specialist Leader, Deloitte Digital

“A shrewd and entertaining account of how bureaucracy becomes entrenched in social organizations and of its encumbering effects on the process of change. But its greatest value is in the sharing of strategies and tactics for knowledge workers trammeled by bureaucracy to―like Sumo wrestlers―turn the weight of the red tape to their advantage and become innovator-makers.” -- Renata Brogan, Solutions Architect, Women in Tech, Women in IT

“A remarkable and eye-opening journey on bureaucracy written with spark and wit. It will give you a completely different perspective on bureaucracy―particularly entering the next normal. A must-read for all who want to realign and shift bureaucracy towards learning instead of using it as a Schimpfwort (a great word)!” -- Eveline Oehrlich, Chief Research Director, DevOps Institute

“My organization launched an internal program called ‘Kill Bureaucracy' (Kill B). Reading this book made me realize the obvious: One does not simply kill bureaucracy. Following the guidelines and practical examples in this great book, one will understand that he has to simply transform from ‘Homo bureaucraticus' to a monkey, a sumo wrestler, or a razor!” -- George Chr. Georgiou, Enterprise Architect, Bank of Cyprus

“Mark Schwartz turns the tables on bureaucracy, offering a practical guide to stripping out a labyrinth of rules and replacing them with simplicity, ease, and automation. His version of a benevolent bureaucracy paves the path for digital transformation and facilitates creativity and innovation.” -- Kimberly Jonson ― COO, Fannie Mae

“Mark has done it again, giving us IT professionals insights into how we, with our software and our creative software development processes, can change heavy, unproductive bureaucratic corporations into adaptable, human-friendly, value-driven bureaucratic corporations that we all love to work for. Red tape is here to stay; it's a matter of being smart about it. This book for sure will be one I am going to refer to when meeting my colleagues and peers.” -- Allan Nyland Christensen, Senior Transformation Manager, LEGO

“Mark has done it again: with his usual wit and verve, he has cut past normal lazy blather about ‘bloated bureaucracies' to get to the truth about their place in the world. In doing so, he outlines not only why bureaucracies are necessary, but how they are best fought through a deep understanding of their internal logic and weak points. [The (Delicate) Art of Bureaucracy] serves as a handbook on how to fight the good fight not just for IT, but for the world too.” -- Ian Miell, Cloud Native Consultant, Container Solutions

“Mark Schwartz has written a classic on bureaucracy that will always be relevant. A very readable, insightful, playful, useful, and enjoyable book that will help readers who are bureaucrats of any flavor―and any of us who think we don't need bureaucracy but do―as long as it is a lean and learning bureaucracy. Mark provides the techniques of the Monkey, the Razor, and the Sumo Wrestler to effect the required change. As always, a bonus in Mark's books are enjoyable mini-lessons in literature, philosophy, mythology, and pasta!” -- Tom Michelli, Former Acting Department of Defense Principal Deputy CIO, CIO US Coast Guard, and CIO US Immigration and Customs Enforcement

“This fascinating book will make you rethink bureaucracy and give you actionable tools to manage in increasingly complex environments. Mark's ability to weave philosophy, history, and humor throughout his reflections on real-life experiences puts important concepts in a completely new and important context. His playbook for addressing bureaucracy is compelling and clear―I look forward to adopting many of his recommendations. Hooray for the intersection of Liberal Arts and Computer Science!” -- Rich Seltz, CIO, CDO, Cabot Microelectronics

“I identified with every chapter. Although we tend to think that bureaucracy is a disease and there are no magic recipes to change our way of thinking, we can always think of leaving it on the light side of the force.” -- Laura Caceres, Operations Director, DevOps LATAM

“Informative, interesting, and thought provoking piece that raises the veil on bureaucracy. It elucidates bureaucracy's history, evolution, practices, approaches, perceptions, and learnings. This book comes with a great deal of objectivity that propels the mind to seek innovative ways to create an enabling bureaucracy!” -- Ikoabasi Akpan, Sales Manager, Air France-KLM

“It takes great curiosity to deeply understand organizational bureaucracy, great courage to challenge it, and pure genius to know how to bend it to your will. In this book, Mark delivers a razor-sharp analysis on all of the above and then shares with us a comprehensive roadmap to a better future, where bureaucracy finally becomes the organizational enabler it was always intended to be.” -- John Walsh, Business Relationship Manager, PepsiCo

“A must read for leaders trying to break the vicious circle of ‘it can't be done' in complex organizations. Based on history, sociology, and his own experiences, Mark Schwartz explains the different perspectives on bureaucracy and how to bust it with practical steps. The perfect handbook for transformation under constrained circumstances.” -- Renato Garcia Pedigoni, CDO, Grupo Boticário

“Need ideas to accelerate change and disrupt bureaucracy? This book brings analogies that will relate to your world. Mark uses three levers as themes, each with usable playbooks, that will give you the confidence and early wins to maintain momentum as you break through the barriers most organizations face.” -- Chris Richardson, Deputy CIO, IT Development, Mobility, Smart Cities, Arizona State University

“What do ancient Egypt, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Thomas Hobbes, Moby Dick and the very-often-referred-to Max Weber have to do with digital transformation? A great deal, because bureaucracy is a permanent guest in history and a necessary evil. So whether you have fallen in love with bureaucracy or hate it, you should read this book. Bad bureaucracy can dehumanize, promote blind spots and stifle innovation. But good bureaucracy can introduce fairness and provide efficiency through scalability and predictability, e.g., in regulatory compliance. Once again, Mark manages to combine exciting storytelling with tangible analogies from history and daily life.” -- Chris Russ, Program Director and Senior Lecturer, ZHAW School of Management and Law

About the Author

Mark Schwartz is an iconoclast and CIO and a playful crafter of ideas, an inveterate purveyor of lucubratory prose. He has been an IT leader in organizations small and large, public, private, and nonprofit.

As an Enterprise Strategist for Amazon Web Services, he uses his extensive CIO wisdom to advise the world's largest companies on the obvious: time to move to the cloud, guys. As the CIO of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, he provoked the federal government into adopting Agile and DevOps practices. He is pretty sure that when he was the CIO of Intrax Cultural Exchange he was the first person ever to use business intelligence and supply chain analytics to place au pairs with the right host families. Mark speaks frequently on innovation, change leadership, bureaucratic implications of DevOps, and using Agile practices in low-trust environments. With a BS in computer science from Yale, a master's in philosophy from Yale, and an MBA from Wharton, Mark is either an expert on the business value of IT or just confused and much poorer.

Mark is the author of The Art of Business Value, A Seat at the Table, and War and Peace and ITand the winner of a Computerworld Premier 100 award, an Amazon Elite 100 award, a Federal Computer Week Fed 100 award, and a CIO Magazine CIO 100 award. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B086XM4WCK
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ IT Revolution Press (October 13, 2020)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 13, 2020
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 4494 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 378 pages
  • Customer Reviews:

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Mark Schwartz

Mark Schwartz

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Mark Schwartz is an iconoclastic CIO and a playful crafter of ideas, an inveterate purveyor of lucubratory prose. He has been an IT leader in organizations small and large, public, private, and nonprofit. As the CIO of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, he provokes the federal government into adopting Agile and DevOps practices. He is pretty sure that when he was the CIO of Intrax Cultural Exchange he was the first person ever to use business intelligence and supply chain analytics to place au pairs with the right host families. Mark speaks frequently on innovation, bureaucratic implications of DevOps, and Agile processes in low-trust environments. With a computer science degree from Yale and an MBA from Wharton, Mark is either an expert on the business value of IT or just confused and much poorer.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
106 global ratings
How to Battle the Leviathan of Bureaucracy and Win!
5 out of 5 stars
How to Battle the Leviathan of Bureaucracy and Win!
Why would you read a book about bureaucracy?I I have lived inside the machinations of big, slow moving enterprises for many years. So for me, there is nothing that I found exciting about the beast that is corporate bureaucracy. It got to the point that I jumped from the soulless drudgery of corporate life to the fast paced world of startups.Even startups can become victims of rigid and nonsensical rituals. Bureaucracy is not about the form of organization, it is about people and how we organize ourselves and our work. That is the lesson that I took away from The Delicate Art of Bureaucracy. Mark Schwartz does an excellent job through the many funny and sometimes maddening stories he shares that we humans are all bureaucrats of species Homo bureaucraticus.You may not come to love bureaucracy after reading Mark's book, but you will appreciate Mark's wisdom and sage advice through many years leading IT as the Chief Information Officer of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. In his battles with the Leviathan that is the USCIS, he brings levity and plenty of Moby Dick references as he deftly avoids the traps set by the myriads of confounding policies and procedures like the infamous MD-102 by channeling the ways of the Monkey, the Razor, and the Sumo Wrestler and become a force for positive change.Who is this book for then? For anyone looking to break through the redtape and silos and inertia that prevent innovation and stall transformation. Once you understand the nature of bureaucracy, Mark's insights can help you navigate around the roadblocks and leverage the power of bureaucracy to usher along organizational change.
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Top reviews from the United States

Tiny
5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Analogy
Reviewed in the United States on August 10, 2021
Verified Purchase
I enjoy writing by Schwartz. He uses excellent examples and really draws out how each model applies to business. Monkey, Razor, and Sumo Wrestler might be a stretch but he manages to make it work. Having dealt with federal bureaucracy in DevOps and attempting agile implementations, I felt a close connection with many of Schwartz' examples. A must read if you work in software development
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Mel Stone
5.0 out of 5 stars Another winner!
Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2021
Verified Purchase
If you are preparing to digitally transform your organization, read this. Great breakdown and overview of bureaucracy and what/how to deal with it.
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Teri Patrick
5.0 out of 5 stars A technologist's guide to human transformation
Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2020
I am a fan of Mark Schwartz's prior books, especially War and Peace and IT. He is an entertaining and insightful writer in general with a knack for illuminating fundamental flaws in the current system and making a thoughtful case for change. As an English major working in tech, I especially appreciate the literary references. Tech can be a lonely place for Kafka fans.

More importantly, Schwartz harvests insights from literature to support his musings on the human condition expressed through... IT bureaucracy. Why does this matter? For one thing, Schwartz is a former CIO of US Citizenship and Immigration Services. It's not hard to make a case for the human impact of slow or inefficient digital services in that realm. Yet - the impact of human behavior as codified and expressed through bureaucratic rules fundamentally drives, shapes or blocks progress in every field of human endeavor.

Digital transformation - that overused term that describes the fundamental shift of much of our lives to online experiences - requires a deep understanding of the nature of human beings and human interaction. I've spoken to (or read) many technology leaders who've expressed some variation of: "Technology is the easy part. People are hard."

Schwartz addresses the people part, I'd argue, better than any other technology leader I've come across. Bureaucracy, essentially, represents our shared agreements about how we should, collectively, interact to get things done. Schwartz offers clear guidance, rooted in experience (and literature), on how to push bureaucracy to become agile and adaptive - supporting the behaviors and processes required by the digital age.

It's not a roadmap. It's better than that. It's insight into how and why humans create the rules and systems that allow us to cooperate to do extraordinary things - and how we can begin to update those rules and systems to accommodate the dizzying pace change in the digital age.
One person found this helpful
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Mark Birch
5.0 out of 5 stars How to Battle the Leviathan of Bureaucracy and Win!
Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2020
Why would you read a book about bureaucracy?I I have lived inside the machinations of big, slow moving enterprises for many years. So for me, there is nothing that I found exciting about the beast that is corporate bureaucracy. It got to the point that I jumped from the soulless drudgery of corporate life to the fast paced world of startups.

Even startups can become victims of rigid and nonsensical rituals. Bureaucracy is not about the form of organization, it is about people and how we organize ourselves and our work. That is the lesson that I took away from The Delicate Art of Bureaucracy. Mark Schwartz does an excellent job through the many funny and sometimes maddening stories he shares that we humans are all bureaucrats of species Homo bureaucraticus.

You may not come to love bureaucracy after reading Mark's book, but you will appreciate Mark's wisdom and sage advice through many years leading IT as the Chief Information Officer of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. In his battles with the Leviathan that is the USCIS, he brings levity and plenty of Moby Dick references as he deftly avoids the traps set by the myriads of confounding policies and procedures like the infamous MD-102 by channeling the ways of the Monkey, the Razor, and the Sumo Wrestler and become a force for positive change.

Who is this book for then? For anyone looking to break through the redtape and silos and inertia that prevent innovation and stall transformation. Once you understand the nature of bureaucracy, Mark's insights can help you navigate around the roadblocks and leverage the power of bureaucracy to usher along organizational change.
Customer image
Mark Birch
5.0 out of 5 stars How to Battle the Leviathan of Bureaucracy and Win!
Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2020
Why would you read a book about bureaucracy?I I have lived inside the machinations of big, slow moving enterprises for many years. So for me, there is nothing that I found exciting about the beast that is corporate bureaucracy. It got to the point that I jumped from the soulless drudgery of corporate life to the fast paced world of startups.

Even startups can become victims of rigid and nonsensical rituals. Bureaucracy is not about the form of organization, it is about people and how we organize ourselves and our work. That is the lesson that I took away from The Delicate Art of Bureaucracy. Mark Schwartz does an excellent job through the many funny and sometimes maddening stories he shares that we humans are all bureaucrats of species Homo bureaucraticus.

You may not come to love bureaucracy after reading Mark's book, but you will appreciate Mark's wisdom and sage advice through many years leading IT as the Chief Information Officer of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. In his battles with the Leviathan that is the USCIS, he brings levity and plenty of Moby Dick references as he deftly avoids the traps set by the myriads of confounding policies and procedures like the infamous MD-102 by channeling the ways of the Monkey, the Razor, and the Sumo Wrestler and become a force for positive change.

Who is this book for then? For anyone looking to break through the redtape and silos and inertia that prevent innovation and stall transformation. Once you understand the nature of bureaucracy, Mark's insights can help you navigate around the roadblocks and leverage the power of bureaucracy to usher along organizational change.
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3 people found this helpful
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Paul F. Auclair
5.0 out of 5 stars Humorous, insightful, practical guide to LEAN, LEARNING, & ENABLING bureaucracies
Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2021
If you’ve ever thought of bureaucracy as a four-letter word, this book is for you! Schwartz acknowledges that the bureaucracies we find blocking our way are typically inefficient, wasteful, dehumanizing, coercive, oversimplifying, and risk-averse – but he points to a better way. Bureaucracy done well provides safeguards, best practices, and common expectations while being lean, learning, and enabling. His metaphors of the monkey, the razor, and the sumo wrestler describe with humor and insight how to successfully navigate from the nightmare of bloated bureaucracies to the safety, efficiency, and velocity of bureaucracy done well. A must read for anyone involved in organizational design, leadership, or oversight!
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars More great advice from Mark Schwartz
Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2020
Mark's take on bureaucracy is insightful and useful.
There is lots of great advice on how not just to reduce, but make the processes and functions of bureaucracy of use to delivery.
He has a great writing style that makes it easy to read and fun analogies that make learning and understanding easy.
Definitely recommending to everyone who wonders how to get through their red tape.
One person found this helpful
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Thomas M
5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful, relevant, fun to read
Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2020
Insightful take on the history of bureaucracies, and their raison d'etre (which may not have changed from Napoleonic times), and strategies and tactics to take them on. The book is interesting, playful ,fun, and engaging - which makes it powerful primer on how to engage and work with, around, or through bureaucracies to achieve desired outcomes. Highly recommended. - TM
One person found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Daniel Wandarti
3.0 out of 5 stars Até traz alguns pontos interessantes, podia ter um terço do tamanho
Reviewed in Brazil on May 3, 2022
Verified Purchase
Até traz alguns pontos interessantes, podia ter um terço do tamanho. O autor está mais interessado em contar seus feitos que focar no assunto.
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Masterson
5.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious and highly practical
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 4, 2020
Verified Purchase
All transformation are about the people, and our particular knack of trying control everything with red tape. Mark provides a very humorous recourse as to why we do this and how to get Bureaucracy to work in your company. Loved it. Awesome!
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