I'm thinking about organizations and how they view success. Each organization is it's own ecosystem, and they all have their own forms of Darwinism. The key to survival of the fittest though is first to define what particular definition of fittest that particular system accepts. In some ecosystems in the business business world the fittest might be the achiever, while in many the case you see is that the achievers are the ones considered the weak, the ones that have to go. When the herd is moving toward a stable sense of mediocrity then the ones who get ahead will be the ones to find themselves victims of the hazards of that environment (typically some form of bureaucratic, executive management tyranny), and as in most any ecosystem, the individual weak or dumb enough to be outside the strength of the herd is the one that gets eaten by the puma.
Analogies aside, I wonder what it really takes to come into an organization and introduce true improvements and get the organization to see that those improvements are GOOD. Let's face it, it's not that you can convince people that what they're doing is WRONG, they've been doing it and it works (for lack of any other results that is). So the goal in my new year is to work on demonstrating the value of improvements, and make it show real value. Instead of trying to convince people that what they have is wrong, show them what life would be like with what they could have.
So if that can be summed up in a concrete resolution: As a software developer and business person I will find better ways to demonstrate value added practices, whether in code or business process, in order the introduce improvements into my work place.
It's right up there with my other resolutions:
- eat better (suggested by my loving wife who, for some reason, wants me to live a long life)
- use linux more
- write some software non-work related (open or closed, just write it)
Les
