"There is never any measure of productivity, no actual bosses"
During the nighties top management at a department of a public utility changed with somebody from outside, from one of those big accounting firms if I am not mistaken.
One of his or her great measures was the introduction of a system or to be more precise, the introduction of an extra layer of bureaucracy, whereby a price resembling alleged costs started being charged from that department to the others. In other words, if another department wanted something to be done then a request had to be entered into a system, a quote given and then either approved or declined as being too expensive by the requesting department. This means that at the requesting department anything had to go one step up for approval and the same at the department in question.
In order to control and implement the new way of doing business some bureaucrats had to be promoted to managerial positions, people that were said to understand how the organization worked but ended by just being repeaters of what the big boss was saying. At the same time jobs started being outsourced to contractors including to ex-staff members that just left and then came back in nice suits earning much more
Some consequences of this big change were:
1) that any mistake done by somebody at an outside department requiring somebody at the department in question to help to undue, could no longer be dealt with by means of a simple phone call. Instead a fake task had to be invented, a price negotiated and approved and funny money moved around.
2 ) the introduction between people of artificial barriers including of an extra layer of yes men or yes woman, and
3) things not being done with plenty of resources available simply because they were considered as being too expensive in terms of funny money.
