Last week, the CEO of LIST held a short speech at the end of the year event. I think it was a very good example of how Big Ideas can fundamentally disagree with the reality of the common folk.
The Big Ideas (or Big Plans) were about two new initiatives. The first Big Plan called “program” will supposedly help transversal exchanges between the three departments and the industry, and the second was the creation of a “composite center” (no clearer definition of its role and its relationship to the research center was given during the speech). The daily reality for the center's employees is, I think, quite remote from that magnificence. While our CEO, staying in the Ideal above the fray, was telling us that next year would be different, that the process of the merger was over, and that now we could go ahead with things, I was thinking that there were very concrete problems that ought to be addressed right now and were not. There is first the general atmosphere pervading the center, a noxious mixture made out of fear, subservience, demotivation and frustration which may miraculously come to pass on its own