Rod Grams: “any successful entrepreneur who starts out small and gradually builds their business up knows about bureaucracy. As his…”

“any successful entrepreneur who starts out small and gradually builds their business up knows about bureaucracy. As his or her company grows, so do the piles of paperwork, and the number of employees handling it, and pretty soon projects that used to take a day are taking weeks, or even longer. Lines of communication that used to be clear and open become tangled and confused. What began as a lean machine too often turns into a convoluted, Rube Goldberg contraption. "In every small business lies the seeds of a bureaucracy." I read that line in a recent column in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune-- a piece by Mark Stevens entitled "Action Needed to Guard Against Bureaucracy." "Rules begin to sprout," wrote Mr. Stevens, "and procedures start to take hold that do more to complicate life than to achieve objectives. Left unchecked, these enemies of efficiency tend to multiply until they choke the business." How many entrepreneurs, do you suppose, have choked on their own enemies of efficiency? How many have been done in by a self-generated bureaucracy that simply ate up resources, devoured precious time, and clouded the original goals outlined in the business' master plan? Judging by the rate that small businesses come and go in this country, I guess that it is a significant number. Bureaucracy is a lot like hail on a cornfield--a little is not going to hurt, but too much of it can be disastrous.”