In a 13 March 1998 diary entry I recorded a "marvelous (and scary) talk" with my then-boss's-boss (SG). She was Angst-ridden (as were we all) over the way that our organization didn't seem to be unleashing the creative energies of its people to anywhere near the degree that it should have. Why not? She didn't prescribe, but simply described the symptoms: nobody else ever suggested any new ideas, and things that she asked for turned into Projects-with-a-Capital-P ... which then moved at a glacial pace and showed nary a flicker of brilliance. Yet she knew that we could do so much better!
It seemed likely to me then, and still does, that the real villian in our story was time. We didn't have enough time to think; we were all over-booked on tight-scheduled tasks. As a whole, I estimate that the office took on triple the jobs that it had people to handle. So instead of kindling fires, potentially creative sparks faded and then went out entirely. We had good bureaucratic reasons for trying to do too much at once: we were a new outfit and needed to establish ourselves with some quick victories. But spread so thin, and working so hard just to keep up, we failed.
Saturday, March 03, 2001 at 07:32:10 (EST) = 2001-03-03
(correlates: EmersonOnInformationRetrieval, LivingPhilosophy, BabySteps, ...)