Bureaucracy. A byword for total waste of time. When employed by large organisations it often stifles progress, stamps on innovation and is used as an excuse to justify jobs which should not exist. And no-one benefits from it. It just consumes financial and management resource and obstructs the wood with its many, many trees.

Take charities. Every commercial decision needs approval from multiple layers of management, board members and trustees - preceded, of course, by a steering committee.

Take the UK tax return. So excessive and complex is it that most people who have to send it in just don't understand most of it, because of the endless jargon obscure to all but a few technical specialists.

Or take Sarbanes Oxley, the ultimate bureaucratic irony. It was caused by the failings of a large firm of accountants, and yet who benefits from it by charging huge bureaucratic compliance costs? Large firms of accountants. Costs of compliance for mid sized companies in the US are estimated at between m to m and many thousand man hours each.

IFRS 3 (the international accounting standard on business combinations) is another prime example. It was designed to encourage transparent reporting of business acquisitions - importantly, the value of intangible assets and goodwill - but in reality we found that most of the estimated £80m spent in bureaucratic compliance by the FTSE 100 was wasted as no-one really applied it properly.

That's why I love working with companies with effective and efficient systems. The checks and balances are there to ensure that things are done properly, and this is where bureaucracy has its real purpose. Where it gets out of control, to the extent it loses sight of that purpose and impedes best business practice, gets my goat.