* In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
* Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.
* Competence, like truth, beauty and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.
—Dr. L.J. Peter & R. Hull
* When in doubt, restructure. —Anon.

DICTATED NOTES - NEEDS WORK

Maybe this is a theme to work on: Restructuring. Restructuring usually means restructuring work, corporate-financial resturcturing, which implies firing a lot of people. How about restructuring non-work? Restructuring play. Restructuring life. Restructuring love. Restructuring death. Restructuring carbon-based units. Restructuring silicon-based life. Restructuring thoughts. Restructuring beliefs. Restructuring knowledge.

Ah, a COMPLETE MORON'S GUIDE TO RESTRUCTURING. In that case, restructuring usually implies removal. Take out a lot of stuff. But the stuff that's left back together. Maybe add a few other things for decoration. By following that basic formula, we can perform restructuring in almost any realm. For instance:

Restructuring Politics: remove a lot of stuff. Ok, kill or imprison everybody with certain political viewpoints. Add a little something for decoration, like jackboots and concentration camps. And VOILA! the political system is restructured!

Restructuring Life: well, again, take out a lot of what you're doing, throw it away -- just do a lot less. Let's get minimal.

You can restructure your work by doing [working] a lot less. Restructure your recreation by recreating a lot less. Restructure love by eliminating many love-objects and the time spent on them. Restructuring death -- now, THAT's a little trickier. Kill fewer people? I don't know...

You can restructure your pets by removing excess limbs and other extremities. Thus modifying, performing body modification on a Doberman is, in essence, restructuring the dog.

Restructure a national system by removing parts -- lop-off excess states and territories, for instance. Restructure the state by lopping-off excess counties and cities. Restructure a military-governmental system by minimizing it. Et cetera.

Restructuring is NOT the same as reengineering. Reeingieering could imply a great expansion of whatever it is you're working on. Restructuring almost always implies a reduction.

Uh, let's see -- restructuring a belief system: BELIEVE in a lot less. Restructuring knowledge: KNOW a lot less. Restructuring thought: THINK a lot less. Restructuring emotion: FEEL a lot less. Reduce your mental-emotional systems to the minimum.

Thus, anything can be deconstructed and restructured. Ta-dum! (See my Guide To Decon­struc­tion for more.)

     THE RESTRUCTURING RAP

 It don't have to be so formal
 Ya just sit there looking normal
 And ya chop chop chop chop chop
 Yes ya chop chop chop chop chop
 -
 Then ya stitch it back together
 After ya figure out just whether
 It makes any focking sense
 To expend dead presidents
 On the function or the form
 Of what used to be the norm
 -
 And ya end with something lethal
 And ya poke it with a needle
 And ya zap it up real fine
 Just like Doctor Frankenstein
 -
 And if it lives, well OK!
 And if it don't, and if it don't
 Then try again some other day

Umm, let's see, IF RESTRUCTURING IS A GAME HERE ARE THE RULES. 1) Find something to restructure. 2) Chop it up. 3) Throw away various pieces. 3a) Count the value of the pieces, the total number of pieces and the pieces you have thrown away. 3b) Calculate the ratio of those. 3c) Award yourself points and/or cash prizes based on the value of what you've thrown away and/or the ratio of what you've thrown away to what you've kept. 4) Compare scores. High score wins. 5) Go back to number 1, repeat indefinately.

Oh yeah, back in there, 3b1) I guess: calculate the cost of your restructuring and then figure out how to hide it or charge it to somebody else. If you're working in a realm that doesn't, that is not amenable to value calculations, well, tough! Assign values arbitrarily. Do this if the components, with such components as Love, Hate, Fear.

When restructuring a body, count the value of the human (or other) body parts. When restructuring a fantasy, that's another tricky one -- be arbitrary. What the hell. When restructuring a society or any large social institution, you should consider not just the value of the conmponents, but also their ideological makeup. Since YOU'RE doing the restructuring, YOU get to decide what to keep and what to trash, and who to trash.

GAME-IZING ANYTHING

To expand the series of MORONS GUIDES and GAMES and such, look up lists of modern buzz-words, ones that are especially verbs or verbifiable, and produce a simple MORONS GUIDE for each one. The contents should be obvious, just from the logic of the subjects. Not just older buzz-words like: self-realization or -actualization, or digitization, conceptualization, optimizing, utilizing; but look for more recent lists. I *know* that they are out there... Of course, that's kinda easy, like shooting fish in a barrel or dynamiting them, anyway.

See my Buzzwords pages and this short list of Business Buzzwords and this matrix for building Management Buzzphrases.

Something related to 'restructuring' is 'stabilizing'. You stabilize something by drastically simplifying it -- well, the easy way is to cut off its feet and its head. That way it becomes VERY stable. Of course there is a difference between static stability and dynamic stability, but we won't go into that here and now, will we? Later...

Prioritize, figure out what's important, triage the subjects. Shoot or shed or shitcan everything else. Aw well, that's about enough cynicism for today. Or is it?