Evolution or Revolution

Dr. Weyant's conversation on this topic really stuck with me after class today, and I wanted to put a few thoughts on here about that. The Khe Sahn mentality, as he put is, is definitely something that I can relate to. My bosses are constantly coming up with ways to revolutionize the way we work at my job. The first time they wanted to do this, I was on board with the ideas they had, so I voiced my support, but it never came to fruition. The second time, I disagreed with their ideas, so I made my opinion known about how I felt these plans were not going to help us do out jobs better, my ideas were heard and taken into account, and then it was announced that the changes would go ahead anyway. Then, nothing happened. 

From then on, I learned to keep my mouth shut, especially if two of my bosses were in disagreement. My favorite comment became "You write the playbook, I run my routes."

Later on, as more employees came, the first time the wave of change swept through the management, the new people were concerned, but I and the two people who were there previously just told them to just wait it out, and we'd return to business as usual in a few days. As part of a university department, we experience a high amount of turnover, with only GA's for continuity, and every time a new wave of students comes, we go through these revolutionary ideas that often amount to nothing. 

That being said, there is glacially slow evolutionary change that happens as well. Some of our processes have occurred recently that were in the pipeline for a long time and have improved the focus and direction of the business as a whole, but change does seem to happen at a glacial pace. 

I'm going to ask my co-workers to refrain from making this post public, for obvious reasons, but I just wanted to share that story with the group because I thought it fit in well with our discussion tonight.