Pat me on the head

This little NASA video encapsulates my existence nicely.

NPR - Astronaut's video satirizes NASA Bureaucracy

The video quality is a few steps short of Hollywood - and is not hilarious - but is a good illustration of how large organizations reflexively resist change.



The differences are legion- chief among them:

-I do not design spacecraft
-My ideas aren't based on hard science
-People do not die horrible deaths if my advice is not followed

Which is not to say I feel any less nullified when I'm told that a suggestion is out of scope but may be addressed in a (notional) future project.

I have my doubts that the utopian vision of Google's decision making process is accurate. After, all - resources are finite. Somebody has to say no, and employees who are told no will not be happy.

I suspect a big part of this issue is how a person is told no. Some think you need to be nice. Patronize the innovator, pat them on the head and they will leave happy. Wrong - they will know they are being patronized.

I think a better approach is to show the innovator the reason for no. The problem with the managers depicted in this movie (and let's face it - many real managers) is that they don't know the reason for saying 'no'.

So they make one up.

It's not in our plan.
We have no requirements.

These are not answers - these are just a person who cannot be bothered to give you an intelligent answer.

Which is not to say every self-styled innovator deserves full-on attention from the higher ups.

Som ideas truly suck - cost too much, create more problems, or just don't work. I'm guessing the brilliant-to-sucky idea ratio doesn't favor good innovation.

But picture the manager who takes the time to get the good answer, or steer the innovator to people who will provide that answer.

People who will take a collegial attitude towards the suggestion. Hey, we tried that two years ago. Here's what we found. Are there things we missed?

The mercurial 'no-and-here's why' explanation that isn't a smackdown.

Over the course of my fractured career - I've been that person who felt a sudden burst of insight. Most times I've been wrong. I find that a wider perspective dispells most of my good ideas - but frankly I'm okay with being wrong - so long as I get to learn something.

When my manager roadblocks me in the name of expediency, I still learn. I just learn I have a bad manager.