Like it or not, most of us live in bureaucracies, or have major aspects of our lives decided by them. There are plenty of books, articles, and personal stories that bemoan this fact and wax abstract and philosophical about what to do about it. Most of them come to some conclusion like "civilization needs to be restarted"

This book takes a more "boots on the ground" practical and pragmatic approach. If you've ever actually tried to change anything in a bureaucracy and succeeded (or failed) then some tactics in this book will resonate with you.

For me personally, I really like this book because it exposes just how much work it actually does take to get any kind of bureaucracy to adopt an idea, even a really really good one. I've known far too many people who have worked on initiatives or studies and kind of hoped that their work would stand on its own merits and inspire social, political, or corporate change.

When it invariably fails to do so, they just assume it's "corruption" or some other abstract thing getting in the way. It isn't. It's because bureaucracies are designed to reject change as a feature (as this book explains), and if you don't plan and manage your desired change in very very careful ways all through the bureaucratic process, it won't survive.

Yes, maybe they shouldn't be designed this way, but it doesn't change the fact that they are, and if you actually want to see a real change happen in real life, you need to at least know the basics in this book. ( )