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In the last month I’ve produced five TV shows in Florence and Rome. In the process we’ve worked with wonderful people, without whose help we’d never have been able to do our work. To each of them I am very thankful.

During the filming process, I gained a respect for the cost to a society of a business environment encumbered by a bulky bureaucracy. Italians must be wired differently than Americans because they live and work in a society almost crippled by a cancer-like bureaucracy. I worked with many good people during the process, and don’t mean to complain about them personally. But the system they work within is, as they themselves kept saying while trying to work with their counterparts in other wings of the bureaucracy, “incredibile” (pronounced “een-kred-EE-bee-lay,” while shaking a hand in the air).

Bureaucrats kept saying to me, “I know you don’t have to deal with this in America” ‘ and then would soldier on, producing a fraction of what they might have if they’d simply been able to stand up and reinvent things in the interest of productivity. Here’s my take on it as an observer (who’s thankful to work in the efficient business environment we enjoy in the USA):

Within Italy’s bureaucracy are many zones of responsibility that are separate and equal, mutually dependent but unable to communicate efficiently, if at all. Each apparatus has legions of people working within it, but is hierarchical to the degree that people on a lower level are frightened into inaction if the senior person, called the “responsabile,” is not present. And it is the higher-ups who seem to be important enough to be not at their desk, for various reasons. Responsabiles seem disinclined to empower people below them to make decisions, as they think this would take authority away from them. No one below would dare question the way this throws a monkey wrench into the hope of getting anything done, so they just keep treading water on the government dole. Therefore, if one person is out of town, out to lunch, at a meeting, on vacation, or whatever, a simple decision cannot be made. Like a strange and nightmarish rash, the bureaucracy grows and grows.

In the last month, while trying to get permission to film in a particular place, I would often need to list exactly which pieces of art we hoped to photograph. Since branches of a hopelessly bureaucratic system ‘ almost by definition ‘ do not communicate with each other, we would need to repeat the process of making this list several times. Then, when we’d finally get to a sight, the responsabile there would sit down and scour our paper for something out of order. Typically, we could photograph whatever we wanted as long as it was on the list. If we neglected to add something ‘ even as simple as an extra portrait bust or case of jewelry ‘ we would not be allowed to photograph it. If we asked why, the answer didn’t take logic into consideration. It was just a matter of what the paper said. End of story.

Anyone with a degree is referred to respectfully as “doctor” (dottore or dottoressa). Directors of one sight would complain about not getting any media promotion…and then people at the same sight would refuse to let it be featured in a TV show. And getting the two decision-making arms (which didn’t realize that they were at odds with each other) to talk to each other was not an option.

I found the bureaucracy so pervasive that people with initiative have become demoralized, which is understandable among people whose initiative gets them nowhere. This results in an internal brain drain. I asked a very impressive and well-off parent what he aspired to for his kids, and he said, “To get a government job.” Why? “Because they’ll have job security and a paycheck at the end of the month.”

I rarely dream about my work. But for the last month, my frustrations with the Italian bureaucracy have worked their way into my dreams.