James Boren
Title: Dr. James Harlan Boren
Full Name: James Harlan Boren
Birthdate: December 10, 1925
Birthplace: Wheatland, Oklahoma, USA
Date of Death: April 24, 2010
Occupation: Author, Businessman, Politician, and Speaker
Profile: Best known for
When in Doubt Mumble: A Bureaucrat's Handbook.
Website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Boren
Number of Quotes: 22
A bureaucrat is a person who can make the process more important than the objective.
A defining characterization from his work.
A committee is a group that keeps minutes and wastes hours.
A conference is a gathering of people who singly can do nothing, but together decide that nothing can be done.
A dress that zips up the back will bring a husband and wife together.
Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing.
Bureaucracy is the epoxy that greases the wheels of progress.
Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.
Dynamic inaction.
Perhaps his most famous coined term. The practice of appearing vigorously engaged in a process while ensuring no decisive action is actually taken.
Fluid detachment.
The principle of moving through bureaucratic structures without allowing oneself to become responsible for any specific result.
Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.
Sometimes modernized in later retellings; the core metaphor is Boren's.
Guidelines for bureaucrats: (1) When in charge, ponder. (2) When in trouble, delegate. (3) When in doubt, mumble.
He who handles the wastebasket shapes the policy.
A satirical observation on the hidden power of controlling information flow.
I got the bill for my surgery. Now I know what those doctors were wearing masks for.
I have what it takes to take what you've got.
If you can't convince them, confuse them.
A classic bureaucratic tactic he humorously endorsed.
In the bureaucratic zoo, the rarest animal is the straight answer.
A metaphor from his book title emphasizing obfuscation.
It is hard to look up to a leader who keeps his ear to the ground.
The greatest ability is dependability.
Often twisted to mean reliability in following the process, not in achieving outcomes.
The nice thing about committees is that they relieve the individual of responsibility.
The truest form of immortality is in bureaucracy.
An observation that rules, forms, and committees outlive their creators indefinitely.
When in charge, ponder. When in trouble, delegate. When in doubt, mumble.
This is the core triad of Boren's Laws,
his most famous and frequently cited contribution.
You are not paid to believe in the work you are doing. You are paid to carry out your assigned tasks.
A principle of absolute bureaucratic detachment.
Last on Earth
