Changes at Work

One of the delights of being older is the opportunity to experience the vagaries of time especially the swinging of the pendulum. Sounds strange? Don't know what I am talking about? You are obviously not old enough!

For those of us who have been around a while it seems blindingly obvious that there are just so many ways in which people seem to be able to manage their affairs. What is fashionable one day is out of style the next and then after a period of time, almost when no one is looking anymore it sneaks back to make a reappearance.

Recently you will have seen my comments on the fact that one web site has been attributing the invention of the bikini to some poor schmuck who rediscovered it in the 1930's. Alas for him there are mosaics that are thousands of years old in Sicily in an old Roman Villa which depict girls wearing bikinis.

It is much the same at work. The organisation and its structure and its management approaches all seem to follow cyclical pathways that wax and wane with some 'new' management idea popping up and some young person alight with the enthusiasm of discovery is waxing lyrical about a new way of managing people or outcomes or outputs or whatever.

I was privileged the other day to discover yet another of these charming young people. He came to visit me in my office eager to elicit (or so he said) my views on governance and structure. During the meeting he proceeded to enlighten me about his views on how things should work. Having already had the benefit of some years of experience in these matters when he was still in knee pants I mentally sat back and watched while he drew his pictures on a pad and demonstrated the connections between elements in a governance structure with suggestions on how it could facilitate better outcomes and outputs.

When he had finished, I picked up a pile of paper I had been hiding under my desk and placed it in front of him - nicely and professionally drawn with Microsoft Visio and printed in colour and LO and BEHOLD the drawing was almost exactly what he had painstakingly developed to show me how things should work. His reaction was amusing. He held up the drawing, compared it line by line with the quick jottings he had made on his pad and then in a sort of weak voice said something like, "They are more or less the same, aren't they?" I replied, "Hmmm, yes, they do seem to be similar don't they?"

It was at this point that my young friend asked if I had any more drawings of governance and management arrangements. Sympathetically I produced a few more of my drawings and laid them before him and of course offered (as nicely as I could) to let him take them with him for consideration. This was an offer which he of course gratefully accepted.

When he left the office I was kept bemused by the thought about how often I would have to continue to see repetitions of the wheel being re-created - albeit with a new twist - a different sort of rim perhaps or a pneumatic tyre or maybe even a wheel made from different materials. All 'new' from the perspective of the person presenting the idea but unfortunately just another version of the wheel as far as I was concerned.

It may well be time for me to consider retirement. There is simply no room in this world for us old folks who seem to do nothing else than spoil the fun of discovery for the young.