Reading Time: 9 minutes

I got a new driver’s license. It is my ninth one, as I’ve moved around a bit and all the jurisdictions in which I’ve lived have required you to get a new one. The visit to the Department of Motor Vehicles wasn’t too bad. You can imagine, though, that not everyone was having a great time. The DMV has a notorious reputation, enshrouded as it is in every state in both bureaucracy and legal minutiae. You can either struggle against that or you can choose an alternative.

I actually thought the entire process was pretty amazing. It doesn’t feel that way when you are in it, though. I arrived on time for my appointment. Perhaps this was the first challenge: you can get an appointment but they only come available on the day you need them. So I was up early so that, at 7am when the appointments opened, I could snag one. More than one person showed up at the DMV without an appointment or knowledge they might need one (not all locations have them) and went away frustrated.

What other bureaucracy surrounded by legal minutiae does that remind you of? I immediately thought about courts and the procedural and process rules that people have to navigate to participate in the administration of justice. I had not really considered how much like the DMV a public law library is. I think public law libraries are less notorious, for good and for bad, than other government agencies. But I think most people who have worked in one will recognize this frustration when someone has expectations that go unmet because, well, rules.

The process was pretty much what you’d expect. Stand in a line. On your turn at the desk, turn in papers and answer questions. If you are successful, move to the next station and get your photograph. Then to the next desk, for documentation capture. And so on. Each stage takes time. All around you, people are being turned away because they have the wrong paperwork. Voices are raised when people are being asked to move or act in a given way in a language they don’t understand.

Inevitably, there was muttering about the process. In particular, how long people felt it took to get things done. I’d walked to the DMV from the L station and then had to stand in lines and at desks while the process unfolded. My legs were a bit tired of standing. I can imagine the discomfort others were feeling, especially if they had other places they needed to go to next.

At this point, though, there is a choice to make: do you struggle against the process or do you allow it to play out? As my mind wandered while the data from my documents was typed into machines, I landed on one of my truisms: it takes the time it takes. I might observe ways for the system to improve (why not scan in the documents, like I do when I’m using an accounts payable system, and have it pre-populate screens with data to be validated rather than type it in first and skipping the validation step, for example) but it’s not my system. I do not know why it is designed the way it is nor do I really know the constraints that exist in the process.

Your Reaction is Your Choice

My new job is in a very large organization. The amount of procedural training that exists, only a fraction of which I’ve taken or been obligated to complete, is so much more expansive than in my last law library. I went from an environment where I was the executive of a small public agency to being many layers down in a massive hierarchy. It’s a choice I’m enjoying, but that doesn’t mean I don’t see the differences. When we implemented a new payables process at my former library, it was done in a few months. If we needed to change the process, we did, immediately. In a larger organization, that speed doesn’t exist. But I think it’s a mistake to see inertia when in fact you may only see friction.

And I have many opinions about our systems and processes and how I might prefer they work. But they don’t work that way and the reasons for how they work are not transparent. It’s not just the complexity of the organization, where my law library is a department in a college, and the college is within a university, and the university is within a university system with shared operational functions.

It’s also that, even when the organization is simple, you can’t know all of the context. I was at the grocery store recently and in the line for self-checkout. It was a long line, as it often is after work. The person ahead of me was fuming. Even had they not exploded shortly afterwards, their body language was clearly frustrated.

Eventually it was their turn, and they stormed towards a self-checkout kiosk. The lag in the scanning of items or the multiple screens that they had to navigate seemed to be the final straw. “It has taken me TWENTY MINUTES TO BUY FOUR ITEMS,” they yelled at no one (it was self-checkout, after all). They then directed a few choice remarks at “you”, although it was unclear who “you” was: fellow customers, store staff, the self-checkout terminal. We could all hear this outburst. This seemed like more than frustration. It sounded like anger.

As I walked home with my string bags of food, I thought about that. I had been about 20 minutes too and had more than 4 items and gone through the same line. Perhaps 20 minutes was how long a shop took, no matter how many items you have. I shop there a lot, so perhaps it’s familiarity with the system. But a grocery store is more complicated than a Kwik-E-Mart. More products, more people, more infrastructure. A shop at a grocery store takes the time it takes, and it’s a different amount of time than a convenience store.

Unknowable Constraints

What if you are struggling against the invisible? The reality is that you can’t know what people are dealing with just by looking at them. Trust me, people often have no idea what is going on in your life! I try to remember that when I’m dealing with people: I don’t know how their day has gone, how their environment is unfolding, what things are occupying their mind while they’re trying to complete their work.

Back at the DMV, I was on my third desk and had been standing there the longest. I picked up grumbling behind me, on a line that was not moving very quickly and at the end of the day. But I could either wait or leave and not get my driver’s license sorted out. The goal remained the goal and there was a single path to reach it.

The staff were very apologetic. They didn’t need to be but they were. I don’t have any idea how long it takes to get a driver’s license. Optimally, if you have all of your paperwork in order—I did, thanks to having the ability to access the Secretary of State’s website and its documentation lists, and having digital access to other systems that allowed me to download the documents I needed—and there are no other people in line, how long does it take? I could make a guess but who operates in that sort of friction-free environment except perhaps an oligarch?

Systems lag and computers or the internet can be slow. You may be dealing with someone with a lot of experience or someone who is brand new. In the case of the DMV, they were down nearly 20 staff that day. From a visual standpoint, 20 seemed like a substantial percentage of the staff on the floor. It means that people were working longer, possibly without the benefit of breaks they normally get. Imagine your public law library reference staff having to do longer shifts without being able to get away from the desk or public interactions. It’s wearing. It meant that not only was the process going to be strained, this invisible constraint might cause other problems.

In my case, it meant that my paperwork was completed in a way that wasn’t allowed. I had moved on to the cashier to pay, and they noticed that I couldn’t get the license that I had been given (it had to do with getting a driver’s license and a Real ID at the same time). For just a moment, I struggled with that decision. I was ready to pay and get out of there. But I also didn’t want to have to repeat the process. Also, if someone tells me their process says that I’ve got an error, I trust them. They are more likely than me to know. I went back to previous desk and was directed to the floor supervisor to get my paperwork fixed.

They apologized too, and noted the staff shortage and how that created the opportunity for this sort of error. It took just a minute or two, but even during that time, they received a call that cars were stacking up outside for driving tests. Someone had been accepting new test appointments even though there weren’t staff to handle them. They resolved my paperwork and went off to put out that fire.

Two more desks, a payment to a cashier, and I walked out of the DMV. It had been about 90 minutes since I arrived. That seemed a reasonable amount of time to me, especially given what I knew about their constraints. Even if I had a benchmark optimal time to get a government document, would it matter? The reality is that I’m unlikely to have to go to the DMV more than one or two more times in my life. Sort of like the courthouse for most people.

Goal achieved. Could it have gone better? Who knows?

This is something I struggle with when I see it in other people. I was listening to a conversation the other day and someone was complaining about a new bureaucratic process. Back in the day, something had been easier to accomplish but now there were so many hoops to jump through. You could hear the frustration in their voice, a yearning for the simpler time, a rejection of the new process being reasonable. It was the voice of someone who had not squared themselves to dealing with the new process, who was still struggling against it mentally, if not in fact. It was the 4-items-in-20-minutes but without the anger.

One thing you realize when you’ve led an organization is that a lot of rules are there for a reason. The reason may not be transparent. And, worse, your organization may be acting in a way without knowing why. That is something to remedy. When you have rules about how to handle money (internal controls) and pay bills, or how to hire or separate someone, or even how to provide consistent customer service, it can help the people involved in the process if they know why they’re doing it. That will help them explain if others find the process frustrating.

I will note that there are an awful lot of ethics processes and conflicts of interest processes, things I don’t remember from the last time I was in academia nor things I’d experienced at other organizations. I do wonder if it’s Illinois, or Chicago, which I’ve always associated with the “Vote Early, Vote Often” phrase. I expect the rationale is lost in the mist of time although I think it is always good to be careful with public money.

There are certainly unfair processes and regulations. But there is a huge difference between those and between systems we simply don’t understand and that don’t generate the results as quickly or seamlessly as we’d prefer. I always try to keep in mind that, whatever the system, it is designed to get to an outcome. If it’s an outcome I want to achieve, then I just need to understand the system. The better I understand the system, the better my chances of success.

The Unfought Battle

I don’t have to like the system. I may think it’s awful or think I could do a better job at designing it. But it’s not a valuable use of my time to dwell on that, to try to fight a process just because it’s not how I would do it. I have a certain amount of energy and interest to invest each day in my life. Am I really going to invest it in jousting with bureaucratic processes that are sub-optimal and not my responsibility? The goal remains the goal.

I just had my first expense reimbursement disbursed. I used an online system and was subject to a wide range of rules. I was cautioned that it could be tricky, slow, and there was a decent chance that it could be rejected if anything was non-compliant. Everything went fine. I learned what I could about the system, asked questions about the timing, was careful in completing the form, and was reimbursed. It could have been faster. But it took the time it took.

Finance is a great example. I’m not an accountant. When I have an accounting issue, I hire an accountant. Running HR? I hire an HR person. Need to find obscure legal information? Ask a law librarian. Expertise exists for a reason and we can’t be expert in everything. Systems are designed by people with expertise I usually don’t have, and for reasons I don’t know. Some degree of systems frustration is caused by over-estimating how much we know about how a system might be able to work.

All in all, I have found that my re-insertion in a large complicated organization has been pretty smooth. Whether it’s recent events or just that I’m older and wiser, I am much more chill about process. That doesn’t mean I’ve become complacent. A process is merely a way to get to a defined objective. Sometimes rules are just guidelines. One time to fight is when you are told your goal isn’t achievable merely because other people don’t want it to be achieved.

I was working with some colleagues once who were gatekeeping an objective. They were immovable and it was clear that, while a coordinated effort was ideal, the gate was never going to open to other objective.s Unlike a DMV or a self-checkout, though, some processes are open to everyone to use. If you find yourself facing that situation, the best choice may be for you to follow the process yourself in order to bypass gatekeepers. When I did that, I caused some friction but hopefully also set a path for others. One way to improve things is to show others that alternatives are available. But blazing your own trail carries the risk of what you don’t know.

We do this all the time at traffic intersections and crosswalks. The intersection is a highly detailed, carefully designed system with warnings for everyone involved. Yet it is common for people to ignore that expertise and walk into the intersection even when they have a sign that says they shouldn’t. Choosing to find a new route involves risk assessment.

The first question to ask yourself is what goal you are trying to achieve. Where you can impact the outcome—you’re a director in a stand alone organization or are making change in your own library, for example—it makes sense to challenge assumptions and to find the optimal path to your goal. But if you are still able to reach your goal through a sub-optimal process or set of rules, does it really matter if you think it could be done better? Are you the expert in that process, or the one tasked to complete it? If not, you may not understand why it unfolds the way it does.

Then the question to ask is: do I want to reach the goal and how much unnecessary energy will I expend battling the process to try to alter it? And how will you know? That’s a resource question. For me, I would rather use the least amount of resources possible to achieve the goal. Picking a fight isn’t a good use of resources.

There’s a balance to be found, then, and I think a good leader will try to find that balance. When do processes have to be allowed to play out—and not be bad-mouthed when our colleagues have created the process—and when do they need a bit of a shove, or for an alternative path to be found. Sometimes a bit of humility about one’s own expertise and a bit of patience can go a long way in reaching your goal.