Beating the System: Using Creativity to Outsmart Bureaucracies

When was the last time anyone interacted with an organization, a business, a government agency, a school, or a hospital and got a direct and accurate answer to a question or received a desired service without having to weave through a maze of frustrating and infuriating hand-offs? How often do people attempt to speak to a human in these organizations, but the system wouldn't allow it? Beating the System is for anyone who has faced the bureaucratic blank wall. The authors explain how systems are designed, how they function (and, particularly, malfunction), where their weaknesses are, and the incentives that drive them - as well as how to be creative in beating a system. Entertaining and informative stories illustrate how each creative strategy is used, and the authors offer suggestions for how organizations themselves can avoid frustrating those they serve and employ.

When was the last time anyone interacted with an organization, a business, a government agency, a school, or a hospital and got a direct and accurate answer to a question or received a desired service without having to weave through a maze of frustrating and infuriating hand-offs? How often do people attempt to speak to a human in these organizations, but the system wouldn't allow it? Beating the System is for anyone who has faced the bureaucratic blank wall. The authors explain how systems are designed, how they function (and, particularly, malfunction), where their weaknesses are, and the incentives that drive them - as well as how to be creative in beating a system. Entertaining and informative stories illustrate how each creative strategy is used, and the authors offer suggestions for how organizations themselves can avoid frustrating those they serve and employ.

Russell L. Ackoff is currently Chairman of Interact, an institute dedicated to education, consulting, and research, and Professor Emeritus of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Considered one of the most innovative and insightful management thinkers of the 20th century, he is also the author of the acclaimed The Democratic Corporation: A Radical Prescription for Recreating Corporate America and Rediscovering Success, published by Oxford University Press in 1994.

Sheldon Rovin is Emeritus Professor of Healthcare Systems at the Wharton School and past Director of Healthcare Executive Education Management Programs at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics.