Let's Make A Politburo!

Suppose your organization needs a shakeup in leadership. Perhaps the company has outgrown its founders, or they have found new interests and want to move on. Or maybe it was recently spun off from its parent company, and needs to stand on its own feet now. Or maybe it's just grown big enough that autocratic, single-person leadership is no longer viable.

Now, there are multiple ways to address this. You could bring in a new CEO. Hire a COO that takes the day-to-day running of the business off the CEO's shoulder. Install a broader C-suite. Organize the company into divisions, each led by a person in charge of all aspects of the division, and fully and personally responsible and accountable for it.

But suppose you don't want that. And you'd quite like your company to be more democratic. Not necessarily really democratic — that would be a stretch — but maybe "democratic" as in "German Democratic Republic".

In that case, there is an alternative to common capitalist corporate leadership: the Politburo. Hey, it worked in the Soviet Union, surely you can make it work in your corporation!

So, how do we get started with our politburo?

1. Form a small, homogeneous group. In order to function well and ensure harmonious operations, a politburo should be largely homogeneous. For best results, assemble a single-gender group whose age range spans no more than 15 years or so — say, approximately 40 to 55. The absolute age is of lesser importance; homogeneity is what matters. You can form a politburo of under-30s if you so choose (and if you are one yourself). If you're unsure about whom to include in your politburo, simply look into a mirror and appoint (or hire) people who look superficially similar.

2. Adopt a meeting schedule. The politburo must meet on a regular basis as it is the core decision-making entity of the organization. Establish a regular schedule on which the politburo meets, ideally once a week, but certainly no less frequently than once a month. Ensure that the entirety of the organization is aware of the meeting schedule. Furthermore, ensure that the time allotted to meetings is ample. The politburo may well have to meet for a total of 12 hours per month, no matter the frequency of meetings.

3. Establish a dedicated bureaucracy. All politburo meetings must follow an established format, and follow a process (preferably one identified by a three or four letter acronym). Any petitions for the politburo must follow a special format, and be received by a politburo member, so that that member can assess its merit, sponsor it, and/or discuss it with other members of the politburo. Also, politburo meetings must be recorded in the form of meeting minutes — ideally using a special minutes format not used for any other meetings in the organization.

So, you've formed a politburo. Congratulations! Now how do you operate it?

1. Meet in secret. It is of utmost importance that the deliberations of the politburo remain confidential. Minutes of politburo meetings are for the eyes of members only, and must never be shared with rank-and-file members of the organization — although they may still be used for lawsuits and audits, and for research by interested historians few decades in the future. This secrecy enables several functions essential to the politburo: any member can plausibly argue having supported or opposed a specific petition when they have not, all members can uphold the pretense that an issue was thoroughly discussed when it was passed or rejected without discussion, and no member is accountable for incorrect assumptions or even foolish misjudgments, which might be easily pointed out by an informed reader of the minutes. Naturally, the politburo must avoid such embarrassment at all cost. Secrecy will naturally help the politburo maintain an air of elevated professionalism.

2. Issue general guidelines. The politburo is most effective when it makes vague, general, nonspecific pronouncements, and leaves them open to interpretation by lower ranks in the organization (the people who actually get things done). As such, it should never be getting too deep into specifics. When flaws or ambiguities in any guidelines are pointed out by lower ranks, the politburo should respond with a cross-reference to a different but similarly vague guideline, and assert that that clearly resolves the deficiency in the other. Whether or not this is actually the case is of lesser importance.
   Sometimes, stubborn lower ranks insist on the existence of an inconsistency, and call for it to be resolved. In that event the politburo should recognize that such troublemakers cannot be convinced, and should instead be confused. In that case, the politburo should advise the imminent promulgation of a third guideline to remove the conflict between the existing two, and then indefinitely delay its publication.

3. Diffuse responsibility. Under no circumstances can any member of the politburo assume personal responsibility for any decision that the politburo makes. The politburo acts as a collective body, and as such has collective responsibility and authority.

4. Deflect and defer calls for transparency. Secrecy and confidentiality add to the politburo's air and mystique, and must obviously be preserved under any and all circumstances. This is frequently at odds with recently popular misgivings about organizational efficiency, which highlight the importance of "transparency." Where it is not practical to silence adherents of such tomfoolery, the politburo must appease and sedate them with insinuations of transparency measures that will be implemented "soon" (ideally, next quarter or next financial year, or in a given month — cleverly omitting the year, of course).

5. Promote obtuse and opaque metrics to simulate progress. Since the politburo acts in secrecy and promulgates only vague general guidelines, it is under an obligation to uphold an impression of progress in the absence of real results. To do so, the politburo must adopt metrics reflecting its constant improvement. Such metrics should preferably be pseudoscientific, completely opaque to anyone except their inventor, dimensionless in nature, and should sport a fashionable acronym. "Aggregated Decision-Making Immediacy Norm" (ADMIN) would be a fictitous but entirely suitable example. Scores published for the politburo's own performance under this metric should improve over time in a linear fashion with a slow increase. Graphs containing a plot of the metric, when published, should use unlabeled axes.

6. Highlight the superiority of the politburo method. Periodically, highlight the economic, moral, and scientific surpemacy of the politburo model over all other modes of leadership.

And there you have it. With 3 simple steps and 6 simple rules, you too can implement a leadership method whose Step To Rule Ratio (STRR) is 0.5, exceptionally close to the scientifically established ideal value of 0.42. So do not dither or delay, make a politburo today!