Bureaucracy is not really the problem; unnecessary bureaucracy is.
Irina Rokosz
There are many dictionary definitions of bureaucracy, all pretty negative, but to me, bureaucracy is something quite simple: it’s all the rules and procedures followed by an organization. So the problem lies not with the rules and procedures per se, but with them being too much and too many. In other words, bureaucracy becomes a problem when it stops making sense; when it not only doesn’t help you reach your goals, but it becomes an obstacle in your path.
I’m certain no one is purposefully trying to think of ways to prevent others from reaching their goals (unless you’re the CIA, of course 😉). Quite the opposite, in fact: we come up with processes that can guide us towards our objectives. And yet, quite often we create the opposite effect. Why is that?
Richard T. Farmer, the founder and CEO of Cintas, was famous for teaching his organization to constantly “scrape the hull”. Here's what that meant, in his own words:
“When a new ship is put into the water, it has a clean hull. It moves fast through the water and is very manoeuvrable. It has nothing to hold it back. But if that ship sits in a port for a year, barnacles will accumulate on the hull. It'll slow down the ship. It'll take more power to run the ship than it should. It will become less manoeuvrable because of all the drag. Businesses are just like ships. We have to look for the barnacles. Whether we know it or not, we've got barnacles. Your job is to find those barnacles and scrape them off. Then I'd give examples of barnacles — buying things that you decided you needed 10 years ago and you don't need them anymore. Or having somebody prepare a report that was very important to you five years ago, but now you no longer need it. But they're still preparing it for you. That's a barnacle. People we've outgrown or are occupying positions that are no longer needed — they're barnacles too.”
Rags to Riches — How Corporate Culture Spawned a Great Company
Put simply, your operating system needs constant maintenance and improvement. But that requires additional effort and allocated resources. Left on its own, it will start piling up process after process, rule after rule, until at the end no one can comprehend it in full, because it stops making any sense. You end up with too many contradicting processes and no obvious or easy way to untangle the mess. That’s when bureaucracy becomes a problem.