Sometimes, when things are foolish or pointless, the reason they’re not getting fixed is that the systems that are intended or supposed to fix such things are themselves foolish or otherwise broken. Adjustments are not liable to help in this situation. What may be called for, whether subtle or not, is revolution.
“This task you have asked me to do–do you really want me spending my time doing that?” When making assignments, it is easy for individuals in positions of power to take into account the apparent necessity of performing a task, but they often don’t have the resources to consider how the task might be the wrong task.
Doing things sustainably, so that they continue in an ongoing way, without using up necessary supplies and without rendering the larger environment toxic, makes a lot of sense. Helping individuals or groups learn to take care of themselves in this way makes a lot of sense, too, and the work can be very rewarding. But working to […]
The website tools that are available now allow companies to measure how much time—down to the second!—that a visitor spends looking at each individual webpage on the company’s site. If most visitors flee the page immediately, that’s a pretty good sign that the page isn’t delivering what they wanted or expected. A good first question […]
Recently, there was a big scuffle at the university where I work: should the mountain in the logo be blue (as it is currently) or yellow? All sorts of complaints and tomfoolery, made unintentionally comic by several individuals’ use of the “reply all” button to emails that had been sent out to the campus-wide mailing […]