I am writing this post from a seat on a crowded ICE train heading northwards to begin the first part of a trip for me. Back to Shopping Mall for a series of meetings and to do some things on the house. I will also do some medical tourism-in the interest of making someone else file an insurance claim for a change.
Think about that. I am writing this post from the inside of a train going 190 km /hr. And this can be done all over Germany-and elsewhere in Europe. In the US? Not so much.
So I am trying to console myself. If you have to be stuck in the middle of a worthless reorganization instituted by a worthless piece of shit selfish man, at least its nice to have good things to do during one's own time. I guess things could be worse. A lot worse.
Where this is going and how it it is going to play out, I am not sure. I have now been witness to two conversations where leadership is slowly waking up to what a disaster this move is. But will they rise up and speak out against the abomination of personal aggrandizement and empire building? Not a chance.
And that my friends is why American flag officers just suck.
In the meantime-there is the joy of the train.
Skippy,
Would you be willling to take a train from “Shopping Mall” USA to the nearest major airport? If so, then I suggest you should get on the band wagon in CA and wait for the CA Highspeed rail that will be able to take one from LA to SF. But, itwill not be high speed and you will have to transfer trains (which I admit you do here in Japan) but the plan was sold as something else (like the ACA) and now the residents of CA are stuck with a billion dollar bond measure that they will be paying off.
High speed rail was first authorized (US Congress passed and paid for) back in 1965, what has happened to it since then? I guess it’s just one of another of LBJ’s programs that have wasted the taxpayers money over the years.
Skippy:
Sorry to hear about the continuing train wreck of the reorg that you have written about previously. It reminds me of the time with a company here in Florida where an ambitious woman from the corporate office came down on a 2 year contract deal and proceeded to TRIPLE the personnel in her department. I warned various folks that the product line produced at the facility would not support such empire building (it was a lean mean organization for a reason – it was all we could afford based on the product line profit!!).
No one listened.
In classic Dilbert fashion the woman continued to build her empire, made sure that the corporate office only heard what she wanted them to hear and got promoted and out of the FL office before it all came crashing down.
There are people at the corporate office who STILL believe that this woman was a roaring success in FL….
You cannot fix stupid, unfortunately.
No you can’t. Especially when something was done as underhandedly as this reorganization was.
All reorganizations are done in the dark and for good reason. Oxen will be gored. Fatted calves will be offered up. Sacrifices will be made. Blood will be drawn. Better to just let everyone find out the gory details after the decision is made and executed. It’s not like they made the decision to change without knowing exactly what the fallout would be. They just don’t care.
Well that does me no good. And lets remember-its all about me. And I will say it again-it is a conflict of interest to have a contractor designing the organizational structure of a new organization.
Skippy, it really isn’t a conflict of interest at all. At SPAWAR Gauss hired an outside contractor to head the redesign/reorganization of SPAWARSYSCOM and its various subordinate entities. The kicker may have been that the management group consulted for the work was not permitted to bid on any of the positions redefined and created but that wasn’t their schtick. IIRC it was something like Black Mountain Group and not a Lockheed or SAIC effort. I suspect in your case though, the contractor redesigning it all is also going to ‘win’ most of the new billets created. Either way though you lose because the final signatures on that new org chart is the flags not the company CEO’s.
Curtis that is exactly what will happen and it is not the first time this kind of thing has happened. But the key issue here is that this does not require a “fresh look”. All it would take is about a days work-with military and government personal to parse out assignments, decide how to organize and whether you could fund some higher grade civilian positions. I firmly believe this is a conflict of interest because the person doing the study stands directly to benefit. WHen SPAWAR did their study-they probably had a scope of work and a mission analysis. None of that is happening here.