Solutions are Easy; Wresting Control in Order to Implement Them Is Another Thing Altogether
It was meeting No. 15 and I was done.
Jane, the Creative Director of the radio station, was going on about whether the carpet would be burgundy or navy and I excused myself. My boss looked up.
"Everything OK?"
"Just hitting the head," I lied and like a soon to be absentee father promising he'd be back after he grabbed a pack of Winstons at the corner market, I split and never returned.
Five months (and 15 increasingly populated meetings) earlier, I had noticed that the studio at the base of the station was being used for storage. The studio had been built as a fully functional radio studio but once the elevators were put in they realized the noise of it obliterated the studio's use.
It faced the hallway passed by millions of visitors to Navy Pier and I thought that if we dressed it up and added some display materials, it could be a handy marketing opportunity to the vast numbers of passers-by. My boss loved the idea as it had sat dormant for nearly five years.
I drew up my ideas (new carpet, paint, and a back curtain plus Apple Store-like hanging panels to easily change up poster collateral). He loved them. All he needed was the approval of department heads who up to that point couldn't have cared less about it, give me a budget and we're off to the races.
Except.
If something was being done, every department head wanted some modicum of input. They all wanted a piece of control. So we had meetings. And more meetings. My ideas were quickly dismissed and replaced. We argued about the most minor of details.
The Marketing VP wanted to make sure that the revamped studio was available for selling sponsorships. The Director of Membership balked because the money that was donated to create the now dysfunctional studio came from a big donor family and they should certainly have some input. The Communications Director was concerned about the branding possibilities. The Facilities Manager wanted to make sure everything was flame retardant.
Everyone wanted a piece. Everyone wanted to have a say. Nothing got done but people sounding off about their perceived slice of the pie.
"Where'd you go?" My boss was confused at my departure.
"Dude. This is ridiculous. You go ahead and have your meetings. Once you have an idea of what we're doing, let me know, give me a budget, and I'll get it done. But I can't handle any more debate about it. At this rate, the planet will burn up in a cinder in space before a decision is made."
I wonder how many genuine solutions to current problems get bogged down in meetings demanding a certain power-hungry consensus.
It's almost comically obvious that if the country declared the end to the War on Drugs and legalized both use, possession, and sales of narcotics, there would be an almost revelational change in the fabric of every day life. Police would suddenly have time and resources to deescalate the almost maniacal focus on black criminals and there would be a dramatic reduction in both gang crime and the disproportionate incarceration of blacks because the crimes would no longer be criminal.
Likewise obvious is to drastically change how we fund public schools to even the playing field without regard to racial or socioeconomic issues. Stop funding schools via zip code, every school gets the same money, and go.
Plenty of people have solutions (or at least ideas with potential) concerning our gun violence issues, the climate, election laws, the economy. There are also a stadium-full of people lobbying for their piece, their say, and in some ways, their designs to obstruct change for whatever specific agenda each one promotes.
As we armchair our way through turbulent times, substituting on-the-ground change with digital screeds designed to get attention rather than results, I'd like to believe that there are those out of our sights doing the work. That there are still people out there with ideas and others who can see through the noise of too many people with too many agendas to accomplish anything, so here's the budget and go.
I'm optimistic but cautiously so. Wanting to believe something is not the same as believing something. What I do believe is that one cannot fix problems without genuine, full-bodied attempts to change, assess, and change the approach if the first one fails, nothing changes.
"Dude. This is ridiculous. You go ahead and have your meetings. Once you have an idea of what we're doing, let me know, give me a budget, and I'll get it done."
Two weeks later, he came over to my desk.
"You have $5,000. Do whatever you want. Just get something done. You're right. Those meetings were becoming pointless and if I want it done at all, we have to circumvent the chatter and just do it."
So I did. And everyone loved it (although Jane still thought navy would've been a better color for the carpet). It stayed that way until after I left five years later. I think they changed it up because the sexy Apple-like display panels were a giant pain-in-the-ass to switch marketing collateral and apparently, I was the only one who knew how.
