Bureaucratic Leadership: Leading Through Plans, Rules, and Procedures

If you want to make leadership easier and more predictable, you may choose a bureaucratic leadership style. In this approach, the leader acts primarily as a supervisor, ensuring that everyone follows organisational plans, complies with rules, and carries out established procedures. Plans, rules, and procedures represent business practices that have already been proven to support organisational competitiveness. Everyone has clearly defined rights and responsibilities, documented through plans, rules, and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). In the era of technology, bureaucracy has also become easier to implement and monitor. So, how about your organisation?

This leadership style can be used to reduce the risk of failure in building organisational competitiveness when leadership is passed down to your successor. Your successor can continue to replicate the way you have led the organisation. All strategic thinking and the mechanisms used to mobilise people have already been translated into plans, rules, and SOPs. If your successor wants to introduce changes, they will need to deal with people who have already become accustomed to the business practices embedded in those plans, rules, and SOPs. This is why change is not easy under bureaucratic leadership.

Even the authority of each person has already been defined through plans, rules, and SOPs. No individual has absolute authority in bureaucratic leadership. Authority is distributed among people according to the plans, rules, and SOPs that have been agreed upon. However, this combination of distributed authority can also make the organisation slower. When business conditions develop as expected, established business practices can respond effectively. But when disruptive changes in the business environment occur instantly, bureaucratic leadership may not be able to change business practices as quickly as competitive conditions demand. When business conditions no longer develop as expected, people’s authority may need to be revised. Changing authority takes time because it must also be followed by changes to plans, rules, and SOPs.

Not every business sector is suitable for bureaucratic leadership.

This style is particularly appropriate for mandatory or highly regulated industries, where organisations must comply with strict rules in conducting their business. Examples include banking, insurance, hospitals, and public services. Government regulations provide boundaries that help protect these businesses from uncontrolled changes in the external environment. Disruptive changes in the business environment are often first addressed through changes in government regulations. Once government regulations change, businesses operating in regulated sectors must then adjust their plans, rules, and procedures. For example, changes in the banking environment may first be addressed through changes in regulations issued by Bank Indonesia (BI) and the Financial Services Authority (OJK). Banks then respond by changing their own plans, rules, and procedures. So, do you still want to use bureaucratic leadership?

Bureaucratic leadership is therefore more suitable for business sectors that are relatively stable, or where changes in the external business environment do not need to be addressed immediately by the organisation. The government acts as a filter for changes arising from an uncertain business environment, determining which developments require a regulatory response. If the government responds by changing regulations, then your organisation must adjust its plans, rules, and procedures accordingly. If there is no regulatory response, you need to ensure that existing plans, rules, and procedures continue to operate as intended. There can therefore be an interesting advantage to operating a business under a very strict government regulation. The government can become a shield, protector, and guide that accompanies your organisation as it competes while navigating an ocean filled with extreme waves. But is that really the case?

Bureaucratic leadership is a manifestation of transactional leadership because leaders use rewards and punishments, active monitoring, and passive monitoring in managing the people they lead. Active monitoring means ensuring that everything people are going to do is consistent with what has been written in the organisation’s plans, rules, and procedures. Passive monitoring, on the other hand, means periodically evaluating what has already happened and comparing it with the plans, rules, and procedures established by the organisation.

If you prefer transactional leadership, you can use bureaucratic leadership to optimise its implementation. So, how about you?