We made it!

A little housekeeping before we get started. There's something I gotta say -- I love people, most all people. Everyone I have worked with I have truly felt honored to be there. I have been very privileged to work with some of the best people on earth. So please do not take anything I say personally!
I plan to skewer the cows that need skewering. I don't plan on mentioning companies or specific people I have worked with -- this is not about complaining, griping, criticizing people that don't have a chance to talk back. It's about learning.
I have been interested, for some time now, in how groups of people get together and interact. For some reason, you can take a group of really smart people, put them together, and they can do some silly things. Why? I don't know. I keep trying to figure it out. Sometimes when I read the newspaper I see decisions and results that committees have made that I KNOW everyone in the room had to feel it was a colossal screw-up. But somehow, these things happen anyway.
I have worked in projects where not only was the project off the rails, everyone you talked to, from the guy at the bottom to the guy at the top, KNEW it was off the rails! And yet life went on. People kept going to meetings, reports were generated, deadlines made and blown -- it was like living in a Twilight Zone episode. And maybe I'm off-base here, but I really don't think those situations are that unusual. Which is an amazing statement in itself.
So let's have a fun time sharing how organizations do stupid things and celebrate the fact that we're all just dumb schmucks in this world doing the best we can. If we can't laugh at ourselves, what's the fun? After all, accepting that we have foibles is the first step in learning what to fix