Opportunity versus Motivation

I got one of those fairly rare offers in that comes only a few times in a career:  the chance to reinvent everything.

With Hammer Fall II, my manager (among others) has left.  His fingerprints - and that of his predecessor - are all over the system under which I have had to work for the last five years.  Two layers of excessive bureaucracy for the sake of an opinion of how things should be done does not lead to a highly effective system.  After a while of battling the opinions one simply becomes quietly numb and tries to figure out the best way to work within the confines of what one has.

But they are gone now, gone with the shifting winds of the industry which seem to engulf us all at some point, blowing us on to another destination or place of employment.

And so the suggestion came yesterday - or more of a question really, the question of "What is your vision?  How soon can you provide it?  What would you make the system?"  Heady questions - the sort of thing that can make or break a career.  And yet I find myself struggling.

Why?  Because I have been so long in a system where incompetence and overbearing authority seems to be rewarded and all things must have the imprimatur of the person above you that the thought of being able to actually effect change seems to have become quiescent within me - indeed not only quiescent, but almost a thing which cannot be resurrected.

This is remarkable if I sit and think about it for a moment.  My personal life over the last few years - indeed, over the last weekend - has definitively demonstrated that with effort and practice and dedication anything is possible.  I know this to be true.  I have seen it work now time and time again in my own life.  Yet presented with the same sort of opportunity, I merely sigh and try to generate some level of motivation.

It is belief, of course - belief that something like that can be definitively changed and that my efforts can actually pay off.  That is the core of my reluctance to attack the problem.

How does one overcome such a barrier?