[HN Gopher] The Christmas Eve West Wing Fire of 1929
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       The Christmas Eve West Wing Fire of 1929
        
       Author : graderjs
       Score  : 15 points
       Date   : 2021-09-25 11:25 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.whitehousehistory.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.whitehousehistory.org)
        
       | CommieBobDole wrote:
       | The thing that strikes me about this is how much less formalized
       | things used to be - the fire happened on 12/24, a contract was
       | awarded for the repairs on 1/4, and work was complete and the
       | executive branch moved back in on 4/14.
        
         | Aloha wrote:
         | I sorta wonder where the line on organizational formalization
         | ought to be.
         | 
         | I'm part of an organization that functioned well for many years
         | with little internal structure, but now, many of the original
         | principals are aging out of the org, and things are just not
         | working as well without those strong personalities to guide
         | things.
         | 
         | Formalization allows you to swap people out like
         | interchangeable components, but it also acts as strictures that
         | can reduce or in some cases completely eliminate flexibility
         | and dynamicism.
         | 
         | I personally advocate for policy and structure as guidelines,
         | but not as law, it gives folks a seed as to how an organization
         | ought to function - but not so rigid as to act as a girdle to
         | prevent the organization from dynamically responding to
         | changing situations. You want a some critical path areas to be
         | written down as law, but everything else should be lose
         | convention that can be changed at dynamically as conditions
         | suit.
         | 
         | This analogy even extends to programming, somewhat obviously.
         | 
         | It's an interested and relevant discussion for corporate
         | culture, how we govern, and how we organize non-profits. I long
         | ago concluded that the largest cause of failure for startups
         | with an otherwise marketable product, was failing to create a
         | self-sustaining organization, and organizational culture.
        
         | pvg wrote:
         | Isn't this more rather than less formalized? A modern executive
         | would not have to immediately go to congress to deal with such
         | a problem. It might have to engage later to sort out whatever
         | financial issues arise but it could and would act immediately.
         | 
         | To put federal disaster response in a bit of context - in 1929,
         | the president of the United States wasn't entirely convinced
         | the federal government had much of a role in dealing with the
         | Great Depression.
        
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       (page generated 2021-09-26 23:02 UTC)