Tied With Red Tape…

Let us turn a moment or two to what is called red tape⎯by which we mean, essentially, getting lost in procedures, procedures which may be altogether arbitrary, which may be quite apart from principles, and which are sometimes made to seem even more important than people or than solving problems.

“More than one splendid idea,” said a significant source, “has been launched to accomplish a great good only to wind up as an institution more interested in maintaining its routine of procedure rather than in spreading its splendid idea.”

Procedures, like habits, are likely to take hold, even when they emphasize the form rather than the basic facts. Order is surely essential⎯and surely also are certain procedures⎯but when we become too tightly tied up in red tape, common sense and effectiveness and efficiency may cease to function, with arbitrary waste of time, unnecessary delays, making people stand around in needless long lines.

The Master once said something about an ox in the pit⎯which we take to mean doing something about something when the need is now.

What is called red tape is sometimes essential. Technicalities are sometimes essential. There are requirements; there are procedures; there are principles that cannot⎯must not⎯be set aside. But sometimes red tape is simply a procedure that somehow got started and that no one has taken the trouble to stop.

Whenever needless we take people’s time, or insist on meaningless motions, or make men wait in long lines, or insist on unessential procedures we are wasting irreplaceable time and effort and energy. We should never needlessly waste men’s lives in waiting rooms or in long lines and never needlessly tie their hands with red tape.