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Bureaucracy Can Drain Your Company’s Energy. Agile Can Restore It.

Harvard Business Review

Believe it or not, bureaucracy was once a progressive innovation. The German sociologist Max Weber famously praised bureaucracy’s rationality and efficiencies. Today, most people work in some sort of bureaucracy — and according to Gallup, 85% of employees around the world feel disengaged from their work.

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How IBM, Intuit, and Rich Products Became More Customer-Centric

Harvard Business Review

In Rich’s old, functional “silo-based” process, a marketing person with a new customer opportunity would contact their favorite R&D associate, the regulatory and quality assurance departments, packaging, and the plant. But as Intuit grew, informality and entrepreneurship began to morph into procedure and bureaucracy.