How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives
Annie Dillard
How much of our working lives do you spend doing the work that needs to be done and how much you we spend on justifying your work to your superiors, assuming that you’re unfortunate enough to have them? How does this balance compare to how you would like to spend your life?
The complaint that we spend too much time on audits and managerial busywork and not enough on the actual work we’d like to do isn’t new. Philip Tagg wrote about it in 2001, and even though his context was the audit culture of British universities, much of it is equally applicable to any modern organization. One problem with a bureaucracy based on formal processes is that they are often counterproductive:
One recurrent point made by … experts is that good business practice depends largely on relatively informal arrangements because they are much more in tune with the highly complex realities of social and economic relations at the basis of doing business.
And then there’s this:
Perhaps the most serious accusation to level against audit is that it fosters a spirit of self-deprecatory cynicism and hypocrisy. Most colleagues find audit exercises ludicrous but nevertheless go through the motions of complying with their imperatives lest the wrath of management be incurred. We see straight through the emperor’s clothes, so to speak, but feel obliged to stifle our laughter and to hide our sense of ridicule when the emperor’s minions approach us ‘donkeys’ with their managerial sticks and carrots. Repeated viewing of the emperor in his see-through clothing – transparency in the true sense of the word – leads to understandable cynicism towards the system that forces us to carry out the ridiculous chores of audit. A recurrent quip from colleagues is that we’re forced, like circus animals, ‘to jump through hoops.’ The more circus tricks we perform, the more we demean ourselves. After all, the whole idea of forcing someone to carry out a pointless task is to demean that person. Moreover, audit gives the virtual and formal pride of place, neglecting the real content or effects of what we do in our job. It’s like having to recite seven-times-seven Ave Marias instead of giving alms to the poor or carrying out other charitable works.
Nehaveigur 