March 2005 - Pants-ing Tradition

By Anthony J. Lockwood

French commanders, sensing this would not do, ordered a change to less visible powder blue pants. Traditionalists, safely away from the battlefield naturally, howled in mighty displeasure. The French militaire had always worn red pants, thundered editorial writers and veteran’s groups.

It’s idle speculation to guess the number of casualties that might have been averted if the color change had happened without the ridiculous debate. But it can be said that the traditionalists’ death-grip on their notion of conventional troop attire did not help.

In the trenches where you slog daily, traditionalists clutch to yesterday’s thinking and processes with a death-grip that surely does not help your business. Perhaps some of the 3 million manufacturing jobs mowed down over the past few years would have survived if more of us broke with the comfortable ways of the past.

From really smart DE subscriber Sherman in Massachusetts comes the question that inspired this rant: What will be the trigger to mass adoption of upfront and concurrent CAE? The answer, I fear, is that old guys like me—50-somethings who dominate middle and upper management—need to let go of the past or move out of the way.

Too many of us have morphed into the cranky, know-it-all old guys that drove us nuts when first we joined the labor pool. Too many of us cling to old ways that were new 25 years ago.

These ways served us well over the years, and they still work. And that’s the problem. They still work. A shot of bourbon and a burly friend with pliers still works to extract a tooth, too.

Look, applications, processes, and roles have changed. Take an integrated analysis suite such as Flomerics: It challenges the natural order that we’ve applied to the electronic design process. Upfront CFD, such as CFdesign, designed from the get-go to partner with the MCAD process, blurs the bright lines that had previously defined our cozy functional boundaries.

Designers must think analysis; analysts and machiners working cheek to cheek. Function trumps geometry. Concurrency. What is going on here?

Change. Evolution. “Times they are a-changing.” Those in our cohort slow to adopt new tools, new processes, the new natural order of things are getting mowed down by the innovators.

Clinging to the old ways out of misguided tradition assures failure. Risk losing your old, comfortable red pants and embrace change for success.

Thanks, Pal.—Lockwood