HACK YOUR BUREAUCRACY

Two technology and innovation leaders reveal dozens of tactics that enabled them to accomplish seemingly impossible reforms in organizations of all types and sizes. This book shows you how to get big things done and make a lasting impact, whether you just started your first entry-level job, or run the entire company.

Authors Marina Nitze and Nick Sinai apply their experience in government, business, and academia to offer an accessible and entertaining book on bureaucracy-busting. It explores one of the central misunderstandings of leadership: change doesn't happen just because the person in charge declares it should, even if that person is the CEO of your company or President of the United States. The instigator of massive change is often an employee who takes matters into their own hands.

The authors are two former White House officials with broad experience in the public and private sectors. Sinai, now a venture capitalist and Harvard professor, was the US Deputy Chief Technology Officer when Marina Nitze came on board to improve one of the world's most dysfunctional bureaucracies (the US Department of Veterans Affairs) where it seemed impossible to get even the smallest thing done. But Nitze figured out ways to make lasting changes in a short time - and has since gone on to co-found crisis management firm Layer Aleph, where she tackles everything from improving vaccination programs to the foster care system.

HACK YOUR BUREAUCRACY addresses the reality that bureaucracies are explicitly designed not to change on a dime. And, while deep respect for an existing organization juxtaposed against a fierce urgency for change may seem paradoxical, navigating those conflicting forces is the key to making a lasting impact. The word "hack" can be interpreted in many ways - some negative - in today's world. But HACK shows how the best bureaucracy hackers are not insubordinate; instead, they're able to employ "healthy irreverence." Over the course of 6 parts, the book features 50+ work hacks with clear takeaways, as well as dozens of strategies, from making authentic allies and building your case for change to understanding the DNA of your organization and figuring out how to use the bureaucracy against itself.

Alongside Nitze and Sinai's own stories, they offer concrete examples from their fellow bureaucracy-hackers who employed these tactics in the toughest, largest, and most complex of environments - whether it's a Fortune 500 company, a university, non-profit, government agency, or even a local community organization.

Marina Nitze is currently a partner at Layer Aleph, a crisis response firm that specializes in restoring complex software systems to service. Marina is also a fellow at New America's New Practice Lab, where she works on improving America's foster care system. Prior to that she was the Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs under President Obama, after serving as a Senior Advisor on technology in the Obama White House and as the first Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the U.S. Department of Education. She also authored the book Business Efficiency for Dummies.

Nick Sinai is a Senior Advisor at Insight Partners, a VC and private equity firm, and is also Adjunct Faculty at Harvard Kennedy School and a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Nick served as U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer in the Obama White House, and prior, played a key role in crafting the National Broadband Plan at the FCC. Recently, Nick co-founded the U.S. Digital Corps, a new two-year federal fellowship for early-career technologists, launched in the summer of 2021.