Sure, they told you about it, they even sent you to classes or workshops. "You must think outside the box!" For some of us, thinking outside the box is hard, for some of us it's easy. I, personally, have always struggled to think WITHIN the box.
But when you work in a bureaucracy, you know they don't really mean it. You know what happens when people think outside the box. All your "outside the box" ideas have been shot down or, even worse, ignored.
So now we are trapped in another box called "Thinking Outside The Box Doesn't Work." How do we get out of THAT box. That's the trick. Thinking outside the box, in a bureaucracy, is not that hard. There are so many long entrenched, inefficient and ineffective procedures that it's really not that hard to think of better ways outside the current box. That box outside the box traps us again, that box says "nothing can change." If we can’t think outside that box nothing will change.
In a bureaucracy we need to find “outside the box” ways to get “outside the box" ideas implemented. And that will take guts.
“On Wednesday, President Obama put a $500,000 limit on annual pay of bank executives whose firms receive government assistance during the financial crisis. But he also said the new guidelines are “only the beginning of a long-term effort” to realign the way business leaders are paid, beyond the banking industry and other firms getting bailouts.” - Christian Science Monitor
That’ll teach ‘em!
Sure it will.
Want to buy a bridge?
What makes you think people who have made huge salaries will stay on working for a fraction of their salary? A salary exceeded by many junior stockbrokers on Wall Street? You may not like them, but do you think they got where they are by being stupid?
“If, truly, the very best leaders require astronomical salaries, then the banks with salary caps won't be able to afford any managers but losers. Every last one of the best leaders will go to the private firms, which will then proceed to run rings around the others thus hobbled. In time, the government-owned failures will go out of business; the government will be out of the business world as it ought to be. Problem solved! For sure, New York City believes this is what will happen; we're seeing reports of panic in the streets that the executives of New York's bailed-out banks, wanting more than a mere half-mil, will be decamping to greener pastures.
If, on the other hand, mega-salaries are not truly required, but came about by insider games, we'll all be able to see it. The government companies with their cheap leaders will be able to compete just fine. Once that fact becomes widely recognized, what owner or board of directors would be able to justify a multi-millionaire salary for an executive when their government competitor is doing just as well paying a paltry few hundred grand? The executive salary ratchet will go into reverse all by itself, without the need of further government intervention.”
Which will it be?
If we tax the rich excessively, they will eventually relocate their wealth to places that will gladly take a smaller share. Fair? Probably not, but true nonetheless. What we intend to do in the name of fairness and doing the right thing may not give us the consequences we expect. I think we have some major unintended consequences ahead. Whether they are good consequences or bad consequences remains to be seen.
