Hey, it's Adam Grant, host of the TED podcast Work Life. This season, we worked with our

sponsor Destination Canada to share amazing stories from leaders in Canada. Stay tuned

for a story about Julie, who's committed to preserving her country's natural beauty

through innovation and sustainability. I think I have a monthly bureaucracy event that

I deal with. This is my cousin, Ryan Grant. He's a neurosurgeon, and there are a few

things he hates more than red tape. One of his most memorable run-ins with bureaucracy

happened a few years ago when he was in the process of getting credentialed to practice neurosurgery

at a hospital. He submitted his documents and thought everything was good to go.

I think I emailed the next day that says, oh, sorry, your CV has been rejected. I never

had an email like this before. My curriculum vitae has been rejected. So I wrote back. I said,

I don't know what that means. Can you please explain? Yes, we can. So their email back was,

is there a way for you to reformat your CV? Yep, reformat. It turns out the hospital required

the dates to be on the left. My CV at the time was the dates are on the right. I wrote back.

What happens if I don't do this? They won't credential you and you won't be out

to practice neurosurgery. So I wrote back. I'm not interested in doing this.

They had a few back and forths. And so we were at an impasse for a little while. They eventually

accepted it. I don't know if they changed their policy, but that is a definition of bureaucracy.

We're going to prevent a neurosurgeon from practicing over the dates on the CV. Wow.

It's even worse than I remembered. What are the odds that you wasted more time on the back

and forth with them than you would have reformatting the CV? I thought about that, but it's to prove

a point. Even if it took me three or four times as long to get my way, that would have been the right

choice in my book. Bureaucracy is one of the many things that just holds the human race back.

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