....When to draw the line?
I think this line becomes blurrier with each new generation - whether that generation be human or technological. I've encountered this issue repeatedly in the last year or so, in varying ways, and find that I'm running out of.....patience......in determining the appropriate go / no-go moment of action.
Personally, I am a creature of action. The best way that I can sum this up is to Tim Leary's comment, along the lines of an album playing: "If you don't like what you're doing, you can always pick up your needle and move to another groove." I've been fairly able to do this most of my life, until recently, in which my needle seems to have become mired in a groove seemingly filled with peanut butter, and my view of other grooves obstructed by my own mental clutter.
I've been working on cleaning out the mental clutter - I think some of that accumulates naturally with age - but am struggling with the peanut butter in my current groove. This is because of a number of factors that are somewhat beyond my control to scrape away. Some of these factors are aspects of the society in which I find myself currently living: a quiet, serene, somewhat rural town, with a work-ethic that is similarly paced. For most of my working life, I've lived in populations of a couple of million people plus, and the pace of life, and adaptability to change, have been relatively quick. It has been something of an adjustment for me in a quiet town to realize that people in this environment simply choose not to function at the same speed of business. They prefer not to be as embracing of change, innovation, or - perhaps - there is a lacking comfort level, bordering on fear. As a result, the additional effort required to escort people through a business change - even if the end result is significantly beneficial to the individual or a business unit - can become exhausting and repetitive to someone used to championing change in a change-oriented society.
Most often, what I hear is along the lines of, "great idea, let's sit on that for a bit." Other things notwithstanding – like organizational developmental saturation for other change initiatives already in progress, and such – this idea, of “ let’s sit on that” – really stops me in my tracks.
I don’t know what to make of it. It does not logically flow, in my mental processing capacity (pending, again, no other barring activities). I cannot understand why anyone would desire waiting to do something later when it could be done now. Is this a generational issue? Not in my family. Not in the strong work-ethic parental generations of families I know. Not among my parents’ friends.
Where does this desire to “wait to act” come from? Now, I can see the value in this for something that is political or has other consequential risk or consideration – such as rushing into an unsubstantiated war – but in waiting to enact an efficiency, an improvement, or a betterment – that ultimately saves time and money, or creates a safer work environment, or streamlines the effectiveness of information or communication – I fail to see the value of waiting to enact an improvement. This is what has me currently mired. I cannot determine the obstruction, so I cannot, as a result, develop a solution. Which means, for the time being, beyond all that is natural and instinctual to me, I am forced to wait, to swim through mud, to skip through peanut butter, and hope that some aspect beyond my control can open up a channel of clarity for me through which I can forge a continued path of efficiency.
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