Can we stop it with the "czaring" already? It's a nausiating term. I, like history, like my czars corrupt, incompetant, out of touch, with sociopathic tendencies.

The czar I'd like to see: Blagojevich the government transparency and accountability Czar.

Now that's a czar I can believe in!

One useful idea comes from George Orwell: "If you keep the little rules, you can break the big ones." I've found that you can often get away with circumventing procedures, &c. by simply being quiet about it and pretending to be conscientious.

A related idea is quiet networking. I hate networking with a passion, which is one reason why I didn't last in the corporate world. But I did find it useful sometimes to be friendly with people in other departments. If you need to do an end-run around some asinine procedure or political roadblock, it helps to be able to call up your buddy in Payables (or HR, or wherever) and discreetly get the thing done. (NB: this also means you'll be incurring debts, so it's important to be willing to return a favor now and then.) So for low-level cube-dwellers, such as I was, the idea is to learn who can help you, and be nice to them. If you're a supervisor (which it sounds like you are), you may need to learn the network of each of your subordinates.