This is an angry post, so ignore if you can’t handle it. Nothing is as frustrating to as staring at a blank wall. And to continue to use that analogy, nothing is as frustrating as staring into the face of someone who radiates “there’s nothing I can do” or “there’s nothing I will do” to solve your problem. And the same for talking to people on the phone, etc.

Apart from the personal defects these people have (developed), two main reasons, that I can identify, cause this problem:

1. The organisation itself
2. The legal environment

How the problem manifests itself is in several ways:

• things only work in one country / for one company at a time and have to replicated with every move
• many people have to be consulted to make a decision
• long stuffy contracts have to be prepared and read
• papers have to be signed and delivered with the actual ink of the pen (the worst thing about this is that some people never write, except to sign papers, and what point is the signature then?)
• papers have to be sent by 19th century snail-mail instead of the 20th century fax or 21st century email (I expect that by the 22nd century it will all happen by Twitter)

As a consequence, you have to be a master of patience as you face “wall” after “wall” after “wall,” trying not to tell these people how much they really frustrate you (of course, they already know).

I remember reading recently that electronic voting will never happen because anything that can be hacked, will be hacked. So I guess, we will always have to go to a physical office and vote by pressing a button (at least some innovation there). And I guess that signatures can always be faked, when sent via email or fax, so perhaps snail-mail will continue to exist (apart from the very profitable packet-sending business, which, thanks to e-commerce, is here to stay). And I also guess that because each of you speaks their own language and each entrepreneur decides at the start to reinvent the wheel, aka do things their own organisational way, that cross-cultural and -organisational inefficiencies will continue to exist.

When you think about it, the real problem is that humans aren’t telepathic, because if the “wall-person” in front of me could read my mind, they’d be a lot more helpful.

Yes, this was a “what I’d like,” that no one will be able to solve ever.

Vincent

Like

Unlike