"[[George Rathmann]] avoided this entrepreneurial death spiral. He understood that **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. "**Most companies build their bureaucratic rules to manage the small percentage of wrong people on the bus, which in turn drives away the right people on the bus**, which then increases the percentage of wrong people on the bus, which increases the need for more bureaucracy to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline, which then further drives the right people away, and so forth. "[[Rathmann]] also understood an alternative exists: **Avoid bureaucracy and hierarchy and instead create a culture of discipline**. When you put these two complementary forces together—a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship—you get a magical alchemy of superior performance and sustained results." --- **Tags** -- [[quotes]], [[management]], [[organisational-development]], [[bureaucracy]], [[organisational-culture]] **Source** -- [[202410171047 - B - Good to Great]]