79 degrees this morning. Walked 58;39 minutes, also did sit ups and weights.
I was struck by the difference of the city we live in and the next city over. The other City has regulations more like Lakeland used to have and it is a much more attractive city to live in. There are numerous trails/walking paths, landscaping on streets and entrances etc. The city we live in has sidewalks (if you are lucky), and the old “scrape and leave” development patterns.
The City next to us is booming, with substantial housing and commercial construction, including chain commercial, local commercial etc. This demonstrates that letting developers take over the city instead of realizing the City is for the benefit of the residents is good for everyone, including the developers.
Not that the area of the city we live in is doing all that bad, but the difference in living environment is really striking. Guess where we are going to make sure we move when we move, assuming we stay in this area?
There seems to be a general feeling in this area (from the City to local businesses) of a resistance to any type of consideration of whether or not the “current practices” could be changed for the better. An example is the city recycling program, which is very limited for a large city and any questions of “why” seems to lead to defensive comments, not honest discussion about why the procedures are the best and can’t be changed. There seems to be a resistance to any type of even discussion of changes. Another example is the newspaper, which doesn’t seem to want to discuss whether there is a need to relook at their circulation procedures.
My feeling is if you don’t change you get stale, (at least if you aren’t continually looking at possible change you get stale). I think the local procedures certainly provide evidence that my feelings are correct.
While I agree with the concept of emphasizing “promotion from within”, it is so strictly followed in this city, that I think it has led to staleness and a resistance to change and just a real inability to step up to meet the changing needs of the residents and businesses. It is as if there is a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality. Of course, the antidote is to move, or just simply adjust to it and realize it could be worse.
Just read an article about the problems with the “incentive structure” in federal (and probably many other organizations) projects. The article notes that “‘focusing on failure” is counterproductive, since it discourages trying new approaches and (quoting): “All major technological work involves trying new new things, trying new things involves failures and those failure can often often be extremely useful learning opportunities” (The article notes that penalties for failure are actually counterproductive.) (Source: Clay Shirky, “The Key to Successful Tech Management” in the March/April 2004 edition of Foreign Affairs) (Shows how far behind I am in my reading!)
Anyway, to conclude my thoughts, I think this area is focusing on “punishing failure” instead of “learning from failure” and it will be a problem for the progress of this area in the future. It is already a problem for many organizations. Of course “rewarding failure” can be an extremely difficult action to take. Obviously I’m not referring to failure due to incompetence etc., but rather have the courage to try something new and learn from it if it is a failure.
Moving continues. We got the fax machine set up yesterday, and generally have all the printers functioning etc. I have also completed the first wave of “weeding” of the books and now will start the process of weeding the ones I tentatively decided to keep.
The Owl still resides at our front door, guarding against the rebuilding of the bird nest, resulting in a mess on our front porch.
That’s it for now, Thursday, July 24, 2014
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