Once a year, I have the pleasure of being a guest lecturer for an ethics and social leadership class at a local university. The class participants include master's students in nursing and healthcare informatics.

My topic is always the same: I am asked to demystify human resources. This year, the students' questions focused on the following: negotiating an offer, dealing with bureaucracy, performance reviews and terminations.

Dealing with bureaucracy

Bureaucracy is not limited to big organizations. From the largest hospital system to the smallest nursing facility, the combination of laws, regulations and people can create an indirect path to achieving what seem to be straightforward objectives.

So how do you succeed when it seems the people and processes you have to obey are in your way? The answer is twofold: try to understand the other side and manage your expectations.

Managers and co-workers can be some of the most frustrating roadblocks on your way to getting things done. "This is how we do it" and "we have always done it this way" are the phrases you hear right before or after your great idea is shot down.

One of the best ways to counter these objectives is to try to understand why they are there in the first place. And the best way to do this is to talk to the very people who are blocking you.

Try to understand the history that led to this process. And if the person is defensive about answering your questions, try to find out why. Did they suggest improvements a long time ago and get shot down as well? Do your suggestions affect their workload and job duties and therefore potentially threaten their perceived job security?

Get to the bottom of the rationale behind their objections and be sensitive to their concerns, and you will be better suited to answer their concerns.

You may also find that the processes and systems in place seem to exist to make everything take longer. If that is the case, the best thing to do is manage your expectations.

For example, if you think you can eliminate six steps in a process that currently takes 10 steps, it might be a little difficult for you to get support because it appears you are completely upending the process. It is normally more successful and easier for people to get on board if you take an iterative approach.

You may envision a four-step process, but start with reducing it by one or two steps. This more digestible approach is easier for people to tolerate, and it has the benefit of helping you understand the effect each step has.

In other words, you are better prepped to really improve a process if you understand the implications of removing each step. If you removed six steps at once and something goes wrong, how will you know which step was the reason for the failure?

Furthermore, you will have compromised any trust you had to ask for to take such a leap in the first place, thus undermining any future attempts you may want to make to improve other processes.

Thus, large or small, each organization has its challenges. The best way to cope and still succeed in making improvements without banging your head against the wall is to get a little perspective and take a measured approach.

In doing so, you will find you will not only succeed in your goals, but you will also build trust among your co-workers. Often you will look like a hero for accomplishing what others could not.