What’s Wrong with this picture?

“What’s wrong with this?” some may say in regards to this picture taken of the gate at Burn2 Octoburn. It looks like the gate inspired from the real playa and has been used many times before.

On first glance that is true. The problem is in the details however. One being those dust tracks running through the windbreaks. Also the schedule board wasn’t used, listing no activities, yet was kept in place because that is where it belonged. Then there was also the emptiness many times despite the efforts of the few active greeters remaining. If there was an official comment the likely message would be that there was a “volunteer shortage” that while imperfect it was good enough and fortunately was at least completed to any degree. 

That messaging and reasoning would of course have been crafted to deny the true reasons for the imperfection: uncontrolled Micromanagement and Groupthink.

I had offered to put in the work to improve those dust tracks, it would have been a department of public works (DPW) project if that department still existed. I’ve also set up media on prim so could have easily made an in world display linking to the who, what, where guide. As expected though, my offer to provide support and improvement was ignored/denied with no reason given.

The truth is there are visionary managers/owners fully in charge of Burn2 now, they through their micromanagement have fostered a management culture full of groupthink that strives for a “good enough” approach to implementing the owners vision. Due to this management, there is a lot of self censoring and active censoring of the message going on. Because, best agree with those in charge and with power, as they have made it quite clear that those who disagree get excluded. 

Thing is, my offer to fix and improve likely didn’t even get reviewed; it was just dismissed and forgotten. This again is due to management actions it was made clear pointing out “negativity” that is not a show stopper should be self censored and not mentioned.

So the imperfections in the image are not there because they couldn’t be fixed, they are there because the management made their opinion quite clear they didn’t want to be bothered. Those small issues they don’t see or care about Shouldn’t be fixed. Because it’s all “good enough” anyway. Isn’t it?