Perhaps someone could whisper in the ears of some of the apparatchiks and wunderkids, who are now innocently leaving a trail of destruction in their wake, that there are other ways of doing things. Listen quietly to this from Max Perutz, who, as well as being a distinguished scientist in his own right, ran a research lab, which nurtured a number of other Nobel Prize winners (possibly a measure of success?):
“The laboratory owes much of its success to the enlightened policies of the Medical Research Council, especially to Harold Himsworth, its secretary from 1949 to 1968, whose foresight and courage led him to support our early work for many lean years when we had little to show for it yet, and when there was only the faintest hope of it ever benefiting medicine.
Himsworth’s staff did not burden us with bureaucratic rules and futile floods of paper, but saw it as their prime responsibility to help us carry out our research. I reported directly to Himsworth, rather than a Committee; he negotiated the annual grant to the Medical Research Council with the Treasury directly, rather than being allotted the Council’s slice of the overall science budget by a ministerial committee, and he had the authority to take decisions within the broad lines of policy laid down by the Council. This system ensured smooth and efficient running, but Thatcherism has now destroyed much of it. Under her all-pervasive rule and in the name of “accountability”, bureaucracy has multiplied and directors are burdened with mountains of paperwork that leaves them less time to devote themselves to scientific work, the talent for which (and not for filling in forms) earned them their positions in the first place.”
P.S The link to “Max Perutz” is to a set of video interviews that are a sheer delight.