The Bureaucratic Leech

Dear Impossible Readers,

Once upon a time, very close by, there lived a very beautiful leech called Bureaucracy….

I remember a story a friend of mine told me. A person was walking his dog in the park. Then the small dog decided to go down into the rabbit hole. Literally. After that, the fire brigade had to come and locate the little dog in the rabbit hole. A few things came to mind. Among them were “oh what a stupid dog” and “oh what kind of an idiot walks a dumb dog without a leash (yes, I am a cat person, but do not worry, I also love smart dogs). But perhaps the most important thought was “Did I just pay 35% income tax for that?”. Now, that is what I call a waste of tax money.

Unfortunately, humans resemble that small dog much more than we like to admit. We enjoy sending people down rabbit holes, and if we fail, we end up going down them ourselves. Yes, I mean bureaucracy.

Bureaucracy is the human tendency to create rabbit holes, label them carefully, assign someone to guard the entrance, and then act surprised when people fall into them. It thrives on good intentions and consumes time, energy, and common sense. Much like a leech, it does not attack aggressively. It attaches quietly, almost elegantly, and before you notice, you are weaker, slower, and inexplicably tired.

At first, it seems harmless. A form here. A signature there. “Just one more document,” it softly whispers. And because it presents itself as order, safety, and responsibility, we seldom question it. After all, who could oppose procedure? Fairness? Doing things “the right way”? But somewhere between form number three and form number seventeen, something curious occurs. The process becomes more significant than the outcome. The rules outlast their purpose. The leech grows fat.

And when things inevitably go wrong, as they always do, we respond in the only way we seem to know: by sending more people into the hole. Committees are formed. Departments are consulted. Firefighters arrive, funded by that same 35% income tax, to rescue a problem which did not need to exist in the first place.

The tragedy is not the existence of bureaucracy. Some organisation is essential. The real tragedy is that we mistake complexity for intelligence and procedure for wisdom. Like the small dog, we keep rushing ahead, convinced that someone else has checked if the hole is safe.

And this is where the leech shows its true talent.

Bureaucracy does not appear as a monster. It is refined. Symmetrical. Adorned with courteous language and official stamps. It reassures you that everything is under control while quietly consuming. It does not drain blood in a single violent moment. It sips over minutes, hours, years. A meeting here. A delay there. A requirement no one recalls inventing.

Like any clever leech, it convinces the host that its presence is essential. “Without me there would be chaos,” it claims. And so we allow it to remain. We even admire it. We call it “institutional knowledge.” We create flowcharts and display them on walls.

Meanwhile, the dog remains in the hole.

By the time we realise how much has been taken from us. Time, money, patience, initiative. We are already too exhausted to remove the leech. Doing so would require a form, possibly two, and certainly a committee. And so the leech remains, beautiful and well-fed, while we argue over who should recognise that we are bleeding.

Bureaucracy does not solve problems. It feeds on them.

Once upon a time, very close by, there lived a very beautiful leech called Bureaucracy.

And it is still there.

And it lives inefficiently ever after,
Yours Possibly

Further Reading

Breton, A., 1995. Organizational hierarchies and bureaucracies: An integrative essay. European Journal of Political Economy, 11(3), pp.411-440.
Brewer, G.A. and Walker, R.M., 2010. The impact of red tape on governmental performance: An empirical analysis. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 20(1), pp.233-257.
Coccia, M., 2009. Bureaucratization in public research institutions. Minerva, 47(1), pp.31-50.
George, B., Pandey, S.K., Steijn, B., Decramer, A. and Audenaert, M., 2021. Red Tape, organizational performance, and employee outcomes: Meta‐analysis, meta‐regression, and research agenda. Public Administration Review, 81(4), pp.638-651.
Holm, J.R., Nielsen, K. and Timmermans, B., 2025. Bureaucracy, work organization, and the transition to entrepreneurship. Small Business Economics, 64(4), pp.2179-2195.
Kaufmann, W., Taggart, G. and Bozeman, B., 2019. Administrative delay, red tape, and organizational performance. Public Performance & Management Review, 42(3), pp.529-553.
Pandey, S.K., Coursey, D.H. and Moynihan, D.P., 2007. Organizational effectiveness and bureaucratic red tape: A multimethod study. Public Performance & Management Review, 30(3), pp.398-425.