Read and comment if you like

You have too many bosses (don't write that!).

I'm glad it worked out well for you. But maybe next time get "permission" or get all your superiors to support it or make sure you're not associated with it: you don't want your name on it.

Your bosses can't reprimand you for something like that, because their boss has given her/his approval to it, but they will probably feel threatened.

In other words: be sure to take it (just) high enough up so that nobody sees you.

Ask yourself whether the risk is worth it. Activism/idealism at work is very risky.

In my experience, middle management is never honest. If they were, they probably wouldn't be where they are now. They generally like the status quo. Much like society's middle classes: always insecure. Anxiety by understimulation, no idea of right or wrong, correct or incorrect, simply because everything seems rather inconsequential in the greater scheme of things. Management contract targets as substitute of reality.

You can't be honest anymore: they must lie to themselves as much as to others.

Just my position paper.

But it might be good advice for all of us creative visionaries: organisations can only be changed from the top or from the outside. You can do some pro-Deo consultancy work, but let managers co-opt your ideas. They like that: it's what they do. You don't want to be associated with it. Keep it separate from your "actual" work.

Changing organisations is treacherous work. Machiavellian.

I absolutely love it.

Edit:
Was that too antisocial?

Mania deserves to be used effectively: product/service/cause over people. An organisation good for its people but not for the users of its services, even or maybe more so, prisons, can't be actually good for its people. Even laying off people can liberate them.

But people will feel threatened by change, so do things secretively. Going to your boss's boss is tantamount to revolution for some.

Thanks, I enjoyed reading that. I'm doing alright. I'm taking more risperdal the last 4 days. Works every time. I was off work a couple days, too. I go back tomorrow.