Should SIUC be allowed to suck?

Bill Stevens sent it a really smart comment on my patent post, thanks Bill. I responded to it, but I wanted to say something here about my view about life and business.

People like me relentlessly chase perfection. It isn't that I'm perfect (actually, I'm fairly flawed), but I pursue getting better with great energy and persistence. When I'm at work, I chase perfection by figuring out my biggest problems and working on fixing them. If you check out my new company's webpage you can see constant improvement in our product and offerings. We started trying hard, but doing bad and we are getting better and plan to get better still. I like to win and I'm planning to win with this company too.

For example, recently I did an audit of all customer support requests into our system. I prioritized the list and proceeded to make software, process or documentation changes to every item on the list. The goal, of course, is to have no customer problems.

Energetically pursing the problems, unflinchingly dealing with them, imaginatively thinking up how to do better, chasing feedback from all sides and finding solutions to problems is what I do for a living. I'm pretty good at it. I have had more success with this method than a bad SIUC student should ever expect, but I have also out worked everyone around me for many years to do it.

So, if this hard work and improvement plan is what I believe it, should I be content to allow SIUC to suck? Clearly the patent office's performance sucks when compared to top performing universities. Is this OK or not?

For me, this isn't OK. I think that almost all management at SIUC could use a hard shove and be told to get to work. Stop play politics. Stop ignoring your problems and start dealing with them. If you don't want to deal with your problems, don't be in management, let someone with some backbone do it.

Mostly the SIUC management team needs to stop taking the easy way out on everything. The problems they face are going to take unflinching courage, ethics and hard work to deal with. I know the Board of Trustees are just political hacks and aren't going to push, but that doesn't mean that the rest of us should sit by and let the whole institution fall into ruin because we don't care enough to complain.

There are quite a few readers of this blog now. I'm kind of hoping that each of you decides how they want to be remembered, as someone who tried to do great things or as someone who coasts and watches lots of TV. I don't know if I can do great things, but I know there is nothing better on this earth for me to attempt.

Your comments are welcome.