So, this “Earl Silverman” thing. Yeah, I remember when that name started floating around the office. It was supposed to be the next big revolution in how we did, well, everything. Management was all fired up.
My Brush with “Silvermanism”
I first got roped into it when they announced this new initiative. “Project Streamline,” they called it, all based on Silverman’s groundbreaking theories. My department was picked as one of the first to try it out. Lucky us, right? The promise was simple: less bureaucracy, more efficiency, happy employees. Sounds good on paper, as always.
Well, the reality hit pretty fast. Here’s what trying to “do Silverman” actually involved for us:
- Endless meetings: We had meetings to discuss Silverman’s concepts, then meetings to plan how to implement the concepts, then meetings to report on the progress of implementing the concepts. My calendar was a sea of purple blocks.
- New jargon, same old problems: Suddenly, we weren’t just doing tasks; we were “actualizing Silverman paradigms.” Problems weren’t problems; they were “opportunities for Silverman-aligned growth.” It was like learning a new language just to say the same stuff.
- More paperwork, not less: For every old form we got rid of, three new “Silverman-approved” templates popped up. Supposedly simpler, but mostly just different and requiring more boxes to be ticked.
- Confusion all around: Honestly, I don’t think half the people, even the ones pushing it, really understood what Earl Silverman was truly about. It felt like everyone was just nodding along, hoping they looked like they got it.
Things didn’t get faster. Projects got bogged down. Simple decisions took ages because they had to be filtered through the “Silverman lens.” It was frustrating, to say the least. We spent more time talking about work than actually doing it.
How I Ended Up There
You might wonder why I was even dealing with this mess. It’s a bit of a story. Before “Project Streamline,” I was on a pretty decent development team. We were actually shipping stuff. But then the company went through one of its “strategic realignments.” That’s corporate speak for “we’re shuffling things around, and your project is probably dead.”
And it was. My whole team got scattered. I was told my skills were “highly transferable” and that this new Silverman initiative would be a “fantastic growth opportunity.” Truth is, I think they just needed bodies to throw at it, people who wouldn’t complain too much because they were just happy to still have a job after the “realignment.”
I remember my old manager, good guy, pulled me aside before he left. He took an early retirement package. He just winked and said, “Good luck with the new flavor of the month.” He’d seen these kinds of things come and go for twenty years.
So, I stuck it out with the Silverman experiment for a while. Watched a lot of PowerPoints. Filled out a lot of new forms. Drank a lot of bad coffee in those endless meetings. Eventually, like all fads, the buzz around Earl Silverman started to fade. Quietly, “Project Streamline” just sort of… stopped being mentioned. No big announcement, it just fizzled out. We went back to doing things mostly the old way, but with a few weird Silverman-isms still lingering like a bad smell.
That’s my Earl Silverman story. Not a fan, can you tell? Just another one of those things you go through, I guess. Made me real cynical about “groundbreaking theories” from then on.