Gray, Eric wrote:
Sandy,
In fact, contrary to what we observe in nature, change
is not the "default outcome" in most human organizations.
That is because - as a careful analysis of this discussion
over the years will disclose - there are as many ways to go
with a change as there are people prepared to make changes.
I think that there is also a very strong element of emotional
attachment to any system or solution, from those people who had a hand
in creating it (Certainly, I'm just as guilty of this as the next guy!).
Any job is harder if you have to change your tools every time you get
used to them.
It's also true that some people will object to anything in front of
them, simply because it was done by someone else.
We also have the "religious" responses, both pro and con, where
someone either approves (or disapproves) of it simply because of the
source. We've all seen "It's gotta be good, Jon Postel wrote it", as
well as "I'll cut my wrists before I use MS software"
It appears that, if we want to judge solution-quality by mob volume,
we need to find some way to separate the emotional responses from the
reasoned responses. Unfortunately, I don't have one handy.
Note that it is _very_ important to distinguish support
for a particular change from support for the idea that some
change is required. For example, if you have well over 100
people who all agree that change is required, and only 20 who
argue that no change is required, you have to evaluate the
agreement for a specific change (or at least a specific change
direction) rather than a general discontent with status quo.
If no more than 5 or 10 people agree to a specific proposal,
then the net effect is a consensus for the status quo (better
the devil you know).
As one of the people arguing for status quo, I can tell
you that it is not that I am happy with it. It is because I
do not see a reasonably well supported alternative to status
quo being proposed.
...And we are back to what has been said many times already. "Do we
want to change? Answer yes/no" and "What do we want to change to?" are
_not_ completely separable. You admit that you aren't happy about the
status quo, but will still answer "No" to the first question because you
don't trust us as a community to come up with a sane answer to the
second question.
The only quick and easy solution I see would be a multiple-choice
question, perhaps on a web site, with options like:
A) The world is perfect. Change nothing.
B) I hate our system, but don't trust you bozos. Change nothing.
C) Change to cunieform-and-clay, for everything.
D) Change to marble for ID submission, and MS Word '95 for RFC
publication.
etc, etc, etc.
I choose to _NOT_ volunteer to write and host this website.
I like the quote about "coffee", by the way...
Thanks! While it's not original with me, I certainly still remember the
pain involved with the source "Unable to locate COMMAND.COM - Processor
halted"
--
Unable to locate coffee.
Operator halted.
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