Some changes for the better





 

 

People I’ve worked with over the past dozen or so years have probably heard me quote the late Rear Adm. Grace Hopper.

“The most dangerous phrase in the language is, ‘We’ve always done it this way,'” she said.

Hopper helped develop the early computer, inventing the compiler and helping design the programming language COBOL.

Another Hopper quote, highly appropriate to her Navy career: “A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are for. Sail out to sea and do new things.”

But how can you and I do new things? What will the boss say? To that, she had another quotable reply, variations of which I’ve heard forever and I have no way of knowing that it originated with her.

“If it’s a good idea, go ahead and do it. It’s much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.”

I am a fan of change, of adapting to new ideas and designs. That is how we grow.

Dr. Spencer Johnson put out a little motivational book almost 10 years ago called “Who Moved My Cheese?” It is a creative and simple look at how we handle change, using four characters who live in a maze and take different approaches to deal with the search for cheese. Cheese, of course, represents anything worth attaining.

One morning, the cheese cache was gone.

As you might expect, the responses ranged from one that immediately takes off running through the maze in search of more cheese to one who whines, “Who moved my cheese?” and plops down and does nothing.

I only discovered Johnson’s book this past weekend. It’s quite likely you’ve seen it because it’s been a best-seller for years. It is worth the read, if for no other reason than to remind yourself that change happens, with or without you.

When I first started in newspapers, it was at one of the last papers in the state to still use letterpress printing. We still had Linotype machines in the composing room to put together the paper one lead slug at a time. We soon went to offset printing and the big old guys who had been rolling around heavy carts of lead were trained to cut and paste pieces of paper.

Talk about change.

For us in the newsroom, the change came later when the typesetting duties passed on to us. Instead of typing and marking up a story, we were expected to enter it into a computer and edit it for final production.

I was at a small newspaper when that happened. We had two old-timers in the newsroom. The eldest may not have been thrilled about the change but he recognized its inevitability and learned how to do things differently. The other dug in his heels.

The person who trained us in the new system spent one day teaching all of us and an additional day working solo with the stubborn guy.

“I’ve had tougher nuts than him to crack,” she told me.

Two days later, she was gone and he had his old Royal manual typewriter back.

However, he left on vacation a couple of weeks later and did not bother to come back. He decided he did not want to change to keep up.

The facts are that the cheese will move, will grow stale or will be eaten up. What sets us apart from each other is how we respond, whether we decide to take that new ship out to sea and find out what it can do.

Steve Martaindale is a self-syndicated columnist. Write him at penmanmailsteve@ yahoo.com.

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