I’ve spent enough years working within and around institutional systems to recognise a peculiar truth: bureaucracies behave like living organisms, driven by an almost biological imperative to reproduce themselves. Once we establish departments, committees, oversight bodies, or monitoring systems, they develop an inexorable need to justify their continued existence. And they do this not by solving problems, but by creating new ones that require their unique expertise to address.

The pattern is depressingly predictable. A team is assembled to tackle a specific challenge or evaluate a particular process. They produce reports, develop frameworks, establish metrics. But rather than declaring victory and disbanding when their work is complete, they discover new complexities, identify emerging risks, propose enhanced methodologies. Suddenly, what was meant to be a temporary intervention becomes a permanent fixture, spawning sub-committees, working groups, and consultation processes that feed back into themselves in endless loops.

The language surrounding this multiplication is always couched in the rhetoric of improvement. We hear about “continuous enhancement,” “iterative refinement,” “adaptive governance,” and “responsive frameworks.” These phrases sound progressive and dynamic, suggesting organisations that are alive to change and committed to excellence. But strip away the jargon and what you often find is bureaucratic self-preservation dressed up as innovation.

I’ve sat through countless meetings where the primary agenda item is essentially this: how do we prove we’re still necessary? The answer invariably involves developing new policies, introducing additional compliance requirements, or establishing fresh review processes. Each innovation creates work for someone, generates reports for others to read, and breeds meetings to discuss implementation. The machine feeds itself and its offspring, growing more complex with each iteration.

What troubles me most is how this tendency might accelerate as artificial intelligence and automation eliminate genuinely productive work. When machines can handle the tasks that really create value, what’s left for human institutional structures? The answer seems to be monitoring, auditing, and regulating the machines and each other. We risk creating what I call “thick systems” – bureaucratic layers so dense and self-referential that they obscure any connection to actual outcomes.

The tragedy is that this multiplication often crowds out genuine creativity and problem-solving. Resources that could be directed towards meaningful innovation get absorbed by the institutional maintenance required to keep these self-replicating systems functioning. We end up with organisations that are extraordinarily efficient at producing processes but increasingly disconnected from purpose.

I don’t think this happens because people are malicious or deliberately wasteful. Most bureaucrats I know are well-intentioned individuals trying to do good work. But they’re trapped within systems that reward the appearance of activity over the achievement of results. Creating new policies feels productive. Streamlining existing ones feels risky.

The challenge is that questioning these systems requires us to confront uncomfortable questions about our own relevance. If this committee isn’t needed, what about my role on it? If this reporting requirement adds no value, what does that say about the work I do? It’s easier to assume that more oversight, more process, more accountability mechanisms must surely lead to better outcomes.

Perhaps the first step towards breaking this cycle is acknowledging that sometimes the most progressive thing an organisation can do is eliminate itself. True accountability might mean having the courage to say: our job here is done.

In halls where endless process flow,
where policies breed policies and so and so,
we measure what we cannot see,
and call this endless toil progress free.

 

19/7/2025