It’s a study in miniature, a practice in diminutive scale.  There's a control freak, an anal retentive, a blustery visionary, a freaky paranoid, and a few calm cucumbers.

And now, one geek.

It’s only for the short-term; there may be another geek-in-waiting who will emerge to fill the void I will leave in the new enterprise for which this cast of characters will work.

But until then, I’ve got every barrier one would encounter in a much larger organization between a non-digital and a digital workplace.

The control freak resents anything that might unwind the carefully enabling system that props him up.

The anal retentive wants immediate cost reductions greater than any investment made (never realizing because of his narrow vision that it’s his role which may be redundant).

The freaky paranoid frets over the remotely possible but highly improbable.

The blustery visionary endorses all changes now and future, irritating the control freak and the anal retentive; it’s only a matter of time, though, before he becomes uncomfortable with the change that will arrive at his desk, his fingertips.

The calm cucumbers will keep their cool, go with the flow.  And thankfully there will be a number of them to counterbalance the other characters, my little prima donnas.

They give me assorted arguments I’ve heard before: Oh, they don’t do this stuff in this industry.  This will only make things more difficult, not faster or easier.  You won’t catch me using this stuff.

Hah.  I’m on to you, I think to myself.  The next argument I will hear – in just a matter of weeks, if not days – will be, I’m too busy for this email stuff, this new process.

As long as the blustery visionary is on board and signing the checks, you most certainly won’t be too busy.  In fact, you’ll be swamped if you don’t take to it, I’ll be thinking.

The enabling structure will be gone, the crutches removed.  It will be only too obvious that a few people don’t have enough to do, haven’t really been generating value for a long time.  Somebody or bodies will have to walk on their own for the first time.

It’s rather odd to be on this side of the puppet mastery needed for reengineering an organization.  I’ve either been subjected to it or in the thick of the redesign AND the outcome.  But it’s come full circle; I’m on the other side of it, pulling the strings.  What does this one do?  Nothing?  Remove it.  Mapping process after process, flow charts flowing, I’m stripping this little place away to its leanest.

I do have to hide a smirk more than a few times a day.  Or squelch a brow that wants to raise itself too quickly.

But some day soon I may not have to.  For now, I’m hiding in plain sight, right under the noses of this smallish cast of characters. 

7:54:34 PM    comment []