Five-Star Bureaucracy

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I hope the title of this post made you laugh. It was supposed to - although I'm afraid quite a number of you will be laughing ruefully, thinking to yourselves, "Wow, that's my company (or my former company)."
I use five stars as mental shorthand to measure all sorts of things. Customer service, of course - I wrote the book on that, literally. But also Leadership. Culture. Innovation, as in, "Apple has a five-star ethic of innovation, while Burger King is probably closer to two."
We leaders are what we build. Company cultures don't happen by accident, although it certainly may seem that way in many instances. The leader's words and deeds, his priorities and the C-level staff he chooses to support him, all contribute to his company's culture either consciously or by default. Zappos' and Disney's cultures are built very consciously, and have been since they hired their first employee. Bank of America? I can just about guarantee you that was by default, although I haven't had to dubious pleasure of working closely with their top leaders.*
Rapid growth is a big problem: believe it or not, it's actually much harder to manage than stagnation or even contraction. So I suppose I can understand a CEO's urge to build a bureaucracy that is scalable, a complex system that will keep things the same as the firm grows from $1 billion to $10 billion, or from 1,000 employees to 20,000 employees.
I can understand it, but I can't respect it. You can't mandate something like that. Cultures scale. Rules and systems? Yikes, they scale too, but in all the wrong ways.
And most importantly - because this is always most important to me, because I'm smart - the last thing you want to do is build a company that sheds or repulses innovators, leaders, and risk-takers the way a five-star bureaucracy is guaranteed to do. You know who likes rule-based cultures? Rule people. People who are so happy thinking inside the box that they actually still use the phrase, "Think outside the box."
If you want to win, build a culture that attracts winners: people who ask, "What's a box?" ...the kind who ask that but then don't wait around for the answer, because they're too busy winning to really care.
If the notion of a five-star bureaucracy isn't instantly funny to you, because it's an oxymoron, then you probably need a job at the public library sorting the card catalogue. You know where you don't deserve a job? The corner office.

* And now I never will. Oh well.