Loyalty, like fame - is fleeting. Especially if the one in whom you must place it, is a barren vessel.

I used to think that engineers were the most organized and efficient of people - I now recognize that they tend to be somewhat efficient and organized, and have a great capacity for detail, but that extends only to their own project and the scope of the world beyond the confines of their office is blurred and small in its totality. How?

Leaders and managers must, by definition, lead and manage, but must by compulsion also resist the temptation to extend their self-styled divinity to the realm of thing over which they do not have actual control. To control and arrange the daily lives and work haibts of people at the business end of how things work, is to foul up the cogs yourself. Micromanagement at its worst sows the seeds of frustration and hate, and the lack of trust that is at the very heart of its messsage, does not send the good, relationship forming signals that are required to make any team work.

The nitty-gritty details of how things are done are best left to those who have to actually perform the task. That's why managers were invented - so that people could prepare a general direction and the actual forms to be filled, tasks to tbe completed and deadlines are best left to those who can interact with their partners in the various departments to better decide what is need and when and what is the most efficient method of doing this within the confines of what is required by the overall policy.

My respect for my employer (notice I didn't say boss), has shrivelled to an acceptance that he has a good memory. I hear that he is a good strategic think all the time. I am not now so convinced of this - he takes a lot of good ideas and brings them here. That is commendable to be sure, but the many-varied demands on his time, not the least of which is his strike to complete his PhD, has short-circuited his memory, all the while, he remains gruffly agressive over what he feels is his right and perogative as a Director to mete out edicts and directives as he sees fit - regardless of the exigencies of the current plethora of tasks and a myriad of other things which he has committed himself, and therefore, all of us who work for him, to accomplish. His annoyance is then too quickly transferred back to his complaining and whinging minions, when he is in turn, reminded by those parties of his commitments and that his contrived plans did not work and he expects us to lightning-fast change tack and place whatever he is telling us at the moment to be his ultimate priority. What about those other things? Well, those are priorities too. As can be expected, his solutions all appear to work on the surface, but deeper digging finds that they are all of the ad hoc kind and born of a too-busy mind - and he is that - busy. Too busy.

I have ranted before about not wanting to stay where I am at UBC, but this has to be tempered with the awful truth that I have a mortgage to contend with and it must need be my primary concern. Does this then mean that be have to belittle ourselves and stifle our needs and concerns, as human beings never mind as employees? I don't know. This will be a question for the ages - and a little daring would prove useful but we tend to lose more and more of that spark called daring when we age. fortes fortuna juvat - fortune favours the brave. I could do with some better fortune.