Adhocracy is a book that can be quickly read and understood by even the most inexperienced managers. The main purpose of this book is to advocate the introduction of rapid change into bureaucratic organizations. It assumes that all organizations are bureaucratic by nature. Not necessarily true, but for those companies that are non-bureaucratic, it offers advice on how to manage adhocracy versus bureaucracy. The book states that bureaucracy is not bad, just overused.
Adhocracy typifies the oversimplification genre of management writings (another example of this genre is The One Minute Manager). Authors and consultants want to break the job down into small, bite size chunks that make management appear to be easy. Management is not easy, it is difficult...the rules are simple, but the practice is impossible to master. The bits and pieces from Adhocracy are familiar to any good leaders, but would be useful for people that still manage by control and direction.
