Running in Place

There a great film they show to students in Psychology 101 classes. The film how power corrupts. They take a hundred or students from a general intro class and then arbitrarily set part of the class over the rest of the class and the film shows how the power changes the students the exact same student as those who were not selected to be in power. The Ober-students begin to pressure and exert or try to exert their control over their fellow students. This film has become a classic because the subject matter is so clearly stated and so clearly human.

We got the first message from the new regime today; tpical establishing of power. It’s all very clear, times of services, no kids in the office a major change, changing phone message daily. Hard core times in and out, implementation of a Sign out board and time stamped mail and all mail opened and stamped by reception. These came down as a written memo! Not any of that email stuff and hand delivered I am surprised we did not have to sign for the memo. Actually as odd as this looks and feels it’s all good. At least we know where we stand and we have something to hold to and to measure our daily movement. I guess to a degrees this is good business and there has been a good deal of laxness over the years.

And you cannot help it. The ID is a friend of mine we share many ideas and thoughts but we had done that as equals now she is THE BOSS. Sorry to say this makes all the difference. I shall try to make this not the case but I can tell you from my experience this is next to impossible. Oh you can still be friends but only to a degree. You can have a beer with them after work, even have them for dinner, BBQ or what ever there is a definite line which has been drawn and crossing this line becomes lethal in the mind of the subordinate. I just hate to see this behavior and more I hate to exhibit it. I hate always looking over my shoulder or having a ready excuse for incase I am interrogated for one thing or another.

But I envision this regime as a fairly benevolent regime. I will be surprised how strongly the memo will be enforced—actually I suspicion that a large part of the memo is aimed at specific personal. I expect there to be some blood letting as we move on and bounders changed, challenged and reformed. Really, I am just now beginning to “pace” myself for the long run and I would encourage staff to do the same. This is just “interim” we still have to interview for the “new’ director and should the new director be different then the Interim then we are going to be in for the whole thing again just from a newer boss. So, here I am just running in place, building my endurance and getting ready for the long run.