Failing to Learn From History

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer's rumored re-organization and the reasons for it reminded me of a quip that always made the rounds in the heyday of corporate shuffling in companies where I was employed:

"We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning
to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later
in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing;
and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress
while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization."

Falsely attributed to Gaius Petronius Arbiter, a 1st century AD Roman general, it's actually a quote from a 1957 Charlton Ogburn Jr article about Merrill's Marauders in Harper's Weekly. Merrill's Marauders were a highly decorated World War II special ops group fighting in Burma. The quote above doesn't seem to fit the actual unit's meritorious experience...unless the re-organizations were the effect of the deleterious reduction in force through rampant diseases near the end of the unit's life in August 1944, or the re-organizations as various groups were incorporated into the just-hatched unit during October to December 1943. More likely, it is from the latter scenario based on the full quote below (not having access to the full article).

Hopefully, confusion, inefficiency and demoralization aren't going to be the results for Microsoft. However, we can all wonder.

We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganised. Presumably the plans for our employment were being changed. I was to learn later in life that, perhaps because we are so good at organising, we tend as a nation to meet any new situation by reorganising; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.