After all of my gnashing of teeth over the Big Reorg at my place of work, not much has really changed in how I go about my day. My big fear, losing the freedom to pursue my solutions to interesting problems, has been a non-issue. I have teamed up with another scientist to keep the chiral column busy (it helps that each sample takes an hour to run, my conventional method for the same samples takes 2 minutes). It still seems that as long as I keep delivering what is needed for my development projects, management is content to let me tinker around in the lab. I have also been pleasantly surprised at the level of involvement from my new manager to how I coordinate activities in the lab. I expected a much stronger hand.
While some of my fears have not been realized, others problems are starting to pop up. It looks like we're going to treat the new big group as a larger version of our old groups. This will not work. It's just too burdensome. We are also relatively rudderless. The only hint of a vision for the group is to test a particular class of samples in a specified time frame. I think this should be treated as a given as we put more emphasis on improving how we work and gain a better understanding of the fundamental properties of our systems.
I'm doing all that I can to move the group to a greater emphasis on innovation and breaking free of the status quo. The structure of the entire division is not suited to an innovative culture, we're too focused on how many routine samples we can process, but I keep looking for ways to poke and prod the focus of individuals from what they're going to what they could be doing. Surely there is so critical mass that will shift the balance from a focus on routine tasks to an emphasis on innovative work.
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