In Bureaucracy = Death, Seth Godin talks about bureaucracy related to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, and presents a nice, but unworkable, idea to bust bureacuracy.

Seth’s Analysis: “Very little remarkable comes out of bureaucracies for a simple reason. The members of the bureaucracy seek to be beyond reproach. Reproach is their nightmare, their enemy, the thing to avoid at all costs. And the remarkable feels like a risk.”

Seth’s Idea: “Appoint a CNO—chief no officer. No longer can someone say no to an idea and leave it at that. If you want to turn something down, you’ve got to pass it on to your boss. Then either he says yes or gives it to his boss. For a ‘no’ to be official, it’s got to be approved by the chief no officer and countersigned by every manager along the way.”

Unfortunately, it’s hard to bust bureaucracy with more, umm, bureaucracy. Better to empower people with ideas to “just do it!” Encourage them. Back them up. Eliminate approvals. Create many Chief Yes Officers!

In “Where do you get your advice?,” Seth Godin talks about how companies buy credibility from consultants:

“If McKinsey said to close the plant, then it’s a lot easier to sell your board. If you had gotten precisely the same advice from precisely the same 26-year-old Harvard MBA but she’d been in your strategy group instead of at McKinsey, they’d ignore her.”

The truth is third-party validation is frequently important, especially when you need the approval of your board, the financial markets or other important stakeholders. When seeking approval for a $3.6 billion infrastructure program in San Francisco, the utility faced a major credibility problem. Critical to our eventual success was an independent review of the program by RW Beck and an additional review by an independent panel of utility experts. Beck’s reputation for independence and track record were essential.

Of course, their review was conducted by experts, not a newly-minted MBA. While it can be painful to the organization’s staff when they’re not trusted as credible, that can’t be changed overnight. In fact, in many cases, skepticism by governing boards is required. In these cases, having testimonials from credible third-parties is essential. That’s one reason financial advisors, bond counsel and credit rating agencies are part of the debt issuance process. Transparency is required.

Seth also states:

“I think most organizations don’t buy nearly enough advice. They go 97% of the way, do 97% of the work, make all the investments… but then they get too tired and too stuck to actually do the high leverage stuff that works.”

Organizations buy plenty of advice. They also generate plenty of ideas from internal experts. Turning advice and ideas into action—execution—that’s where many organizations are “stuck.”