Hugh Molotsi

My article Beating Bureaucracy Inspires Innovation  was first published on Intuit Labs . Perhaps the biggest enemy of innovation within large companies is bureaucracy — the concentration of decision making in a top-down management structure. In bureaucratic organizations, employees aren’t empowered to come up with new ideas and try them out. Instead, ideas must run up the flagpole. Senior leaders must be influenced. Several managers need to be bought in.  A single manager, who doesn’t like the idea, can derail the whole effort. It may take several meetings and many months to get an idea approved. The result? Employees don’t even bother trying. Innovation stops and productivity is disrupted. “The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline — a problem that largely goes away if you have the right people in the first place.”  —  Jim Collins, author of “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Ot...