Upper management is under the gun to show cost savings in every possible way. Some of the new rules will indeed save millions (it niggles at me a little that many of these proposals have been put forward by me and my colleagues for years and brushed aside as too hazardous for some people's management careers, too politically unpopular).

Some of the new rules are change for the sake of change; change seeks to seem as though "something is being done" and something is being done, all right, chaos ensues. Reputations are made bringing order out of that chaos, often by the people who introduced it in the first place.

And so far, looking at the wide-ranging proposals, I can't see that reorganization of the way we do business is going to save any money. Just certain careers.

What happens in the end is that all the changes, money-saving and cosmetic alike, get grouped together under "Division Cost-Cutting Improvements" and the kudos go to the designer of the cosmetic changes, because they are most visible, when it was the less dramatic cost cutting projects that really saved the day. But boring.

I'm surprised at how easily I can see the ebb and flow of events and their greater pattern now that I am older. When I was younger, I was just frustrated and annoyed by what seemed to me to be stupidity. Now I see how it is driven by fear.

A cycle, driven by fear at its low point and arrogance at the apex.