Today's lesson about going with the flow

Today we had the second annual meeting of Ontario iGEM teams. Last year's meeting was held at Waterloo since we were the ones organizing it, but with the aim of increasing iGEM's visibility within the microbiology community (which has a lot to offer iGEM in terms of faculty and graduate student support), we decided to hold this year's meeting at the 60th Conference of the Canadian Society of Microbiologists. Despite a number of hiccups and hitches in the organization process, the meeting ended up being fairly productive, and I was (somewhat unsettlingly) satisfied at the end of the day. Other musings regarding the meeting will most likely end up here at some point, but I think I learned one important lesson today about going with the flow:

Do not argue about going with the flow.

Going with the flow is something that will happen when it's necessary, whether you plan for it or not. No matter how much of a consensus a group might reach on following a given Super-Awesome Plan of Action, if the plan just doesn't seem to be working in practice, like it or not, the group will then have to devise another strategy — whether this means scaling back a project, redefining previously assigned roles and responsibilities, or any other changes that are appropriate for the given circumstances. But it seems like, in many cases, it's difficult to generate agreement to play things by ear, perhaps because such arguments are often mistaken for opposition to having a Plan A.

Of course you want to come up with the best plan you can for achieving your objectives, but, even when you've learned from firsthand experience that such plans aren't especially likely to pan out as hoped, trying to get people to agree to be ready to adapt if and when the situation calls for it is a waste of energy given that they won't have a choice in the matter when it comes down to it.

There's more I wanted to say on this, but I am losing (very badly) the battle to stay awake, so I leave it at that for now.