Time warp

A good day in Philly, but had a very odd thing happen.  I was here 2 years ago, and I had produced a set of recommendations that I have figured out they really haven't acted upon.  When I got re-engaged, I was reviewing my emails, and found one status report from 11.19.09 that I had sent to my immediate boss, but that may not have reached the rest of the team.  So I forwarded it along.

Today I had a full hour meeting to discuss what I had put into that email two years ago, and what we should do about it.  We went point by point through the email and they explained how this one thing wasn't an issue any more, and how this point was still a problem, and what should we do?

But the strangest thing was that really for most of the document, my recommendations were still valid - they just hadn't gone and done it yet.  The whole place was more or less in the SAME PLACE I left them back then.

So I'm actually now looking at the potential for getting a resource engaged with this client to actually go ahead and do the things that I specifically told them to do over 24 months ago, only this time, really make sure they DO it.

Walking out of that meeting, I ran into my old boss from the earlier time who has moved to a different area.  Ken was a research librarian who had been put in charge of a cardiac center with lots of opinionated physicians.  He always seemed happiest in his office with a whiteboard full of concepts about standardizing diagnosis codes or categorizing procedures - he remained a librarian at heart.  Well his new job is doing JUST THAT - standardizing codes and things.  And he seems happier.

And though he didn't actually do anything with my previous recommendations and that frustrated me a little, I was happy that he was doing what he wanted to be doing in life.

Fascinating stuff.