Beating the System: Using Creativity to Outsmart Bureaucracies

When was the last time you dealt with a bureaucracy the phone company, an airline, a hospital, school, or government agency and got what you wanted without weaving through a maze of infuriating hand-offs? Have you found these systems to be utterly indifferent to the inconvenience or hardship they cause?

Russell Ackoff and Sheldon Rovin say, "Enough is enough!" They have extensively studied organizational systems how they function and malfunction, what drives them, and where their weaknesses are. Here they share both perversely entertaining anecdotes about the abuse of individuals by various bureaucracies and detail the creative and deeply satisfying approaches these people used to get even. Best of all, they offer successful strategies and tactics you can use to pinpoint the weakness of any system and exploit it to your advantage.

Preface
Introduction
Part I. What You Need to Know to Beat Systems
1 Why Systems Need to Be Beaten
Necessity mothers inversion
2 Understanding Systems
Knowledge without understanding is a misguided missile
3 The Nature of Creativity
Those in boxes can't think out of them

Part II. System Beaters: Their Stories
4 Denying Assumptions
Say it isn't so
5 Turnabout Is Fair Play
Do unto the system as it would do unto you
6 Divide and Conquer
When the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing
7 Threaten the System
Squeeze, but sometimes please
8 Sidestep Constraints
Dazzle them with your footwork
9 When All Else Fails, Revolt
You have nothing lose but your frustration

Part III. System Beating in a Nutshell and
Systems Unbeatable
10 Rules of Thumb for System Beaters
The gist of it
11 Making Systems Unbeatable
An ounce of prevention

Stories by System Category
Sources
Index
Acknowledgments
An Invitation to System Beaters
About the Authors