Fable
There are two kinds of sorters in the government office: one looks at envelopes, one looks at cases
The Ministry of Revenue received documents from all directions every day: tax contracts, disaster relief grain, frontier military supplies, and commercial travel notices. At first all documents were sent to the same copying room and cleaned up by the same batch of clerks. Short messages were fine, but when accounts, legal statutes, and terrain maps were mixed together, the copying room often copied the characters correctly while getting the matter wrong.
The Minister first changed the transcription channels. Documents with messy handwriting went to clerks who could read cursive script, those with many counting rods went to accounting clerks, and foreign documents went to translation clerks. This step made each document easier to understand, but it did not decide who would inspect the granaries, who would send letters, or who would seek instructions.
One urgent disaster-relief document was copied very accurately by the scribe, yet no one dispatched grain; another tax deed was sent to the accountant who calculated the silver clearly, yet no one had the inspector verify the land boundaries. Only then did the minister understand: choosing someone who can read a certain type of document solves only the reading problem, not the question of who is responsible for acting.
Later the Ministry of Revenue set up separate bureau plaques. Documents first chose a copying room by difficulty, and after fair copying were handed by matter to the grain bureau, tax bureau, post bureau, or penal affairs room. Each sub-bureau had its own authority, time limits, and receipts.
The minister initially assigned both matters to the copying office. The copying office quickly became overwhelmed: clerks who could read cursive began deciding the order of disaster relief grain, ledger clerks began sending letters on behalf of the criminal affairs office, and translation clerks, because they knew foreign languages, were asked to receive merchants and travelers. Documents were read faster, but responsibilities became increasingly blurred.
A single border-supply matter involved grain, post horses and armaments, and the copy office could only judge which pages were hard to read—it could not decide which bureaus should join forces, who had authority to open the granary, or who was responsible for reporting back. Only then did the minister separate "understanding" and "assigning duties" onto different boards: the former selected people by material difficulty, the latter assigned roles by functional responsibility.
Later, when new clerks entered the office, the minister always had them look at two boards first. Difficult material goes to those who can read it; heavy cases go to those who can take responsibility. If only one board were set up, the office would sooner or later mistake a clever reader for an official with the power to act.
From then on, the government office had two assignments: one asked "who should read this material," and the other asked "who should handle this errand." If the two were mixed together, the more clearly the characters were copied, the more the work was delayed.