Hack Your Bureaucracy

I listened to the audiobook of this through my local library / Libby. I think it would work better as a workbook - I think you'd benefit from writing some notes or being able to have this open on your desk or something to reflect on. In general, I think it has a lot of useful things in it, things that I will look to incorporate or at least be mindful of.

One thing that the author says frequently is that (paraphrasing) nothing gets done in meetings. I have a bit of a bone to pick with that. It may be true in software or developmental work, where the “work” is code, but when you're working on policies or big questions and how they will impact a field of grantees, meetings ARE the work. You need to be able to bring people together, have conversations, and figure out thinking. You can pass a Word document around 5 or 10 people for weeks and weeks, trading comments and feedback, or you can set up a working meeting to nail things down. These are things that matter. So, while I get what the book is trying to say, I wouldn't have been so authoritative in saying, “nothing gets done in meetings.”

Otherwise, there is a lot of stuff in here that could be useful to folks working in bureaucratic systems.