Cowboys vs. Bureaucrats

Are you looking for a Third Growth Option ℠ ?

Ever feel stuck between chaotic speed and suffocating process? This episode opens the conversation on finding the middle ground—what we call structured entrepreneurship.

We get into:

• Why cowboy chaos and heavy bureaucracy both stall growth.
• The tension between “move fast” and “follow the process.”
• How a bit of structure actually creates space for creativity and real opportunities.

If you’re trying to grow without losing momentum—or sanity—this one gives you language and perspective to rethink how your team works.

What’s one place where you feel the chaos/process tug-of-war right now?

Always growing.

Benno Duenkelsbuehler

CEO & Chief Sherpa of (re)ALIGN

reALIGNforResults.com

[e-mail]

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Your team, or at least several of your team
members, probably lean allcowboy or all bureaucrat.
What I mean by that is cowboy uhleaning to cowboy, uh great
drive, no process, a littlechaotic, all bureaucrat, great
process, but no entrepreneurialdrive, innovation to speak of,

(00:22):
right?
Uh you need to balance the two,cowboy versus bureaucrat.
Um, and you might have troublefinding creating that balance,
right?
A lot of our clients uh havetrouble creating that balance.
In fact, I have, you know, Istruggled with that finding that
balance.
I'm a German immigrant who cameto America uh in uh as a

(00:44):
teenager, and Germany is thecountry that kind of freaking
invented bureaucracy, thePrussians did, right?
Uh a very engineering-drivenculture.
And then I came to America, theland of cowboys and um go west,
young man, great entrepreneurialdrive.
Um, recently I asked a client ofmine, um, would you rather die

(01:05):
in the okay corral or suffocateto death by bureaucracy?
You know, she laughed and shegot it.
But you know, the fact is, Ilove planning.
And because I believe that sortof uh measure twice cut once,
uh, that if you um you know youspend a couple hours planning

(01:26):
something, it'll probably saveyou days or weeks um of doing it
badly, um uh bad bad execution,right?
Uh so uh planning is um you knowit gives you in the end the
time.
Uh you know, I I I think ofplanning as, you know, it should

(01:49):
drive maybe 60 or 80 percent ofthe activities so that you have
20% or more left over in the dayto deal with the unexpected, the
stuff that's gonna come out ofleft field where you have to
fly, fly in and and reactquickly to some uh crisis or
some God-given opportunity thatyou're not gonna have time to

(02:10):
take advantage of if if ifyou're stuck in the mud without
any, you know, without properplanning.
Um so uh I you know I'm a bigbeliever in planning.
Uh Gantt charts uh help us sortof force us to think 20 steps
ahead, right?
And it enables, they enable usto show visually to team members

(02:32):
on our team or or in anotherdepartment or in a client's team
how we'll get from here tothere.
So we always strive, you want tostrive to build that middle
path, right?
Enough process to scale, um, butenough freedom to create.
Enough visibility so we candelegate and increase

(02:55):
cross-functional collaboration,but not so much that it chokes
entrepreneurial drive uh orstars creativity.
In season three, episode six, Italked about how to use Gantt
charts uh in productdevelopment, also in lots of
different operational functions,uh, to use Gantt charts at the

(03:15):
right level of altitude, right?
You don't want to be down in theweeds uh where you have hundreds
and hundreds of steps uh andmini steps and substeps to the
substeps, and then you havehundreds of rows on a Gantt
chart.
I think that's that killscreativity and innovation, um,
not necessary to do it at thatlevel of detail.

(03:38):
You don't want to fly so highthat you had 40,000 feet and you
have just you know two steps,beginning and end.
That's not gonna work either.
So you have to find that middlepath.
Uh build a cowboy versusbureaucrat framework that
balances drive with discipline.

(04:00):
Too much freedom is chaos, uh,too much process is death.
Uh so the sweet spot is what Icall structured entrepreneurship
uh that allows and encouragesand drives growth that um can
encourage collaboration betweendifferent people inside and
outside your sphere ofinfluence.

(04:23):
Um if your culture leans toocowboy or too cow uh bureaucrat,
um let's find the balance thatdrives growth without killing
momentum.