7 Tales of Bureaucracy
Internet. The filings weren't a product, they were the glue that make our financial markets work efficiently by requiring corporations to disclose information to the public.
The next day, the chief of staff called up and said that while he fully supported his Chairman, there was one hitch and that was that there was no way they could buy a computer in 60 days and besides, their Internet line had been installed but didn't seem to be working. Could we extend the deadline? I said the deadline was firm.
The chief of staff ended up signing a loaner agreement, we put some Sun boxes in the back of a station wagon, drove down to SEC headquarters and helped them configure their Cisco router and T1 line.
They were up and running by the deadline. The computer staff ended up tickled pink they were running the U.S. government's busiest web server and getting tons of fan mail from their adoring public.
Rule 4 is that when you achieve your objective, don't be afraid to turn on a dime and be nice. You can bang the table and be a total pain in the ass, but there comes a time to be helpful, courteous, and friendly.
—Bureaucracy № 3—
For the next bureaucracy, let's fast-forward this Wayback Machine to late 2006 and early 2007—when Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion, when C-SPAN started allowing you to use their video of congress on your blog, the year Netflix started streaming videos—the year "you"
