Cadets 2017

[George Dixon]

4 hours ago, 87cadet said:

This.  

Going backwards, yet again. 

Blame falls squarely on one person, yet again. 

Sad to say, but I no longer expect to see a championship contending Cadets corps unless and until Hop courageously decides that the Corps is more important than his ego. 

But I'm not holding my breath.

It's a tragic story repeated in business, sports, and the non profit world: overstaying your welcome, overestimating your ability, overplaying your cards, and stacking the deck (and Board) with yes-people who fail to see the obvious that any insider or outsider has seen for years.  

The current management model is too broken to tweak, fix, or reshuffle.  It's been that way for over a decade. Longer really, but changes in DCI and the wider culture (yes, there is a world out there that is not drum corps) has also changed enough to expose the Hop model as not just passé, but parasitic upon past success and gravely imperiling the future. 

Cadets are not a middle of the pack corps. They are contenders or they are not Cadets.  It's not about the medals.  It's about the art, innovation, emotion, and most of all education.  

Hop's publicly throwing the MMs under the bus on FB a couple weeks ago was the very last straw for me. That was ugly.  Worse, it was pathetic, even unhinged. Not everything must be social media "content". Not everything must be shown and showboated.  Let the kids, let the innovation, let the work, let the culture, let the performance, let the Art speak for itself. And I submit that all the Hop "content" on social media over the last ten years has been a sure sign and symptom of increasing discontent, another immature overcompensation for underlying lack of confidence, a clumsy attempt to cover a lack of faith in leadership by offering a pseudo transparency, a pseudo bottom up empowering and involving community, and too often, exasperating and utter ineptitude. Simple psychology: start with excuses, manage expectations, CYA, Doctor the spin, project blame, rinse, repeat. 

You can attempt to flush the failures down, and when the process and results are posted ad nauseam on social media, and it looks all white and clean and new, almost like fine China, it's somehow easy to delude yourself into forgiving and hoping against hope for next year, and the next year, and the next year, and thus forgetting that you need to stand on your two feet and back away to see you're still just looking at a toilet. 

This is a top down problem.  The many thousands of alumni and friends and current team members must step up to fix it.  

Now. 

It's done broke. We gotta get woke. 

I'm not gonna get stoned to be satisfied with the spurious "progress" of sixth or seventh. I'm stone cold sober. 

I am dismayed by those who see this year as a step forward. From what? 

Remember.....First as tragedy, or many of them, then a Stoned farce.  

I don't measure progress from a series of ineptitudes and chronic mismanagement that resulted in the open festering weeping boil of a show design like Stoned.  Hell, I even came out almost immediately after the show concept was announced a few years back and said to Cadets leadership and on this forum that "10" was doomed because it missed the entire point of the music, and sadly, I was right.  The design and executive team of any of half a dozen or more dci corps would have won with that monster corps of MMs, because they had better design across the board, and they consistently have better design because they have better management and better execs who leave ego at the door when they go to work.  

Nothing more important to a team than the leader. Any design or fundraising or morale or recruitment/retention issues are just symptoms of a kind of management that just doesn't work anymore.  

Tyrants and egomaniacs like Toscanini are dead, though today we have another similarly famous (though much less talented) leader whose name begins with a "T" that I wish were dead, or never had been spawned. So it goes. The new and usually very successful leadership and organizational culture model is much more egalitarian, empowering, non-hierarchical, nurturing, creative.  That is what millennials and GenZ love and have come to expect, and it's why Cadets have been passed by the Coats, Crown, Cavies, SCV, etc.  (And you think I'm talking about friggin scores, don't you?)

All those corps have better and more talented and creative and education-focused and empowering teams top to bottom. Or as I should say, better all around.  ;)

Hop must retire.  (He won't likely be fired with all his BFFs on the board though.)

So much talent out there to find better exec and board leadership, staff, etc.  Alumni and supporters would come out of woodwork to help and improve and reform and reload.  So many people have been sitting on their hands waiting until this leadership era ends and a new great era begins. 

Every year the cadets discussion threads generate more interest than anyone's.  So many people care.  So deeply.  So many people are so frustrated.  So many people need to come home and help. 

Thank you Hop.  I love you, but it's time to transition to another role in another organization.  

It's bigger than drum corps.  So let's aim higher, unafraid of the perilous skies, welcoming the springtime when kings go out through the Door, which, with our undying and renewed support, soon will reopen and surprise with a new entrance, not of another, but many hundreds, the family reunited and regenerated and once again revolutionary. 

That's my rocky point, my simple song, my simple gift, my demons and my better angels, my somewhere, somehow, someday. 

Zag!

FHNSAB

 

Yeah uh let's put things in perspective and half of what you say here isn't even factually accurate. Go find another corps to root for. This isn't about you buddy 

[George Dixon]

Nm

Edited August 4, 2017 by George Dixon

[George Dixon]

13 minutes ago, GlenI said:

Went by Franklin field today to see a little of the rehearsal. There is absolutely no parking in that part of the city! Watched the color guard and pit section working. Some folks adding purple reflectors to the stained glass panels. Saw the nice new food truck!

Was also at the Chester show. Absolutely LOVE the new ending. I've not gotten chills and goose bumps like this from a DCI performance in recent memory. The last minute just keeps coming at you. Amazing! 

Thanks for the update. Sounds great

 

[JKT90]

5 hours ago, 87cadet said:

This.  

Going backwards, yet again. 

Blame falls squarely on one person, yet again. 

Sad to say, but I no longer expect to see a championship contending Cadets corps unless and until Hop courageously decides that the Corps is more important than his ego. 

But I'm not holding my breath.

It's a tragic story repeated in business, sports, and the non profit world: overstaying your welcome, overestimating your ability, overplaying your cards, and stacking the deck (and Board) with yes-people who fail to see the obvious that any insider or outsider has seen for years.  

The current management model is too broken to tweak, fix, or reshuffle.  It's been that way for over a decade. Longer really, but changes in DCI and the wider culture (yes, there is a world out there that is not drum corps) has also changed enough to expose the Hop model as not just passé, but parasitic upon past success and gravely imperiling the future. 

Cadets are not a middle of the pack corps. They are contenders or they are not Cadets.  It's not about the medals.  It's about the art, innovation, emotion, and most of all education.  

Hop's publicly throwing the MMs under the bus on FB a couple weeks ago was the very last straw for me. That was ugly.  Worse, it was pathetic, even unhinged. Not everything must be social media "content". Not everything must be shown and showboated.  Let the kids, let the innovation, let the work, let the culture, let the performance, let the Art speak for itself. And I submit that all the Hop "content" on social media over the last ten years has been a sure sign and symptom of increasing discontent, another immature overcompensation for underlying lack of confidence, a clumsy attempt to cover a lack of faith in leadership by offering a pseudo transparency, a pseudo bottom up empowering and involving community, and too often, exasperating and utter ineptitude. Simple psychology: start with excuses, manage expectations, CYA, Doctor the spin, project blame, rinse, repeat. 

You can attempt to flush the failures down, and when the process and results are posted ad nauseam on social media, and it looks all white and clean and new, almost like fine China, it's somehow easy to delude yourself into forgiving and hoping against hope for next year, and the next year, and the next year, and thus forgetting that you need to stand on your two feet and back away to see you're still just looking at a toilet. 

This is a top down problem.  The many thousands of alumni and friends and current team members must step up to fix it.  

Now. 

It's done broke. We gotta get woke. 

I'm not gonna get stoned to be satisfied with the spurious "progress" of sixth or seventh. I'm stone cold sober. 

I am dismayed by those who see this year as a step forward. From what? 

Remember.....First as tragedy, or many of them, then a Stoned farce.  

I don't measure progress from a series of ineptitudes and chronic mismanagement that resulted in the open festering weeping boil of a show design like Stoned.  Hell, I even came out almost immediately after the show concept was announced a few years back and said to Cadets leadership and on this forum that "10" was doomed because it missed the entire point of the music, and sadly, I was right.  The design and executive team of any of half a dozen or more dci corps would have won with that monster corps of MMs, because they had better design across the board, and they consistently have better design because they have better management and better execs who leave ego at the door when they go to work.  

Nothing more important to a team than the leader. Any design or fundraising or morale or recruitment/retention issues are just symptoms of a kind of management that just doesn't work anymore.  

Tyrants and egomaniacs like Toscanini are dead, though today we have another similarly famous (though much less talented) leader whose name begins with a "T" that I wish were dead, or never had been spawned. So it goes. The new and usually very successful leadership and organizational culture model is much more egalitarian, empowering, non-hierarchical, nurturing, creative.  That is what millennials and GenZ love and have come to expect, and it's why Cadets have been passed by the Coats, Crown, Cavies, SCV, etc.  (And you think I'm talking about friggin scores, don't you?)

All those corps have better and more talented and creative and education-focused and empowering teams top to bottom. Or as I should say, better all around.  ;)

Hop must retire.  (He won't likely be fired with all his BFFs on the board though.)

So much talent out there to find better exec and board leadership, staff, etc.  Alumni and supporters would come out of woodwork to help and improve and reform and reload.  So many people have been sitting on their hands waiting until this leadership era ends and a new great era begins. 

Every year the cadets discussion threads generate more interest than anyone's.  So many people care.  So deeply.  So many people are so frustrated.  So many people need to come home and help. 

Thank you Hop.  I love you, but it's time to transition to another role in another organization.  

It's bigger than drum corps.  So let's aim higher, unafraid of the perilous skies, welcoming the springtime when kings go out through the Door, which, with our undying and renewed support, soon will reopen and surprise with a new entrance, not of another, but many hundreds, the family reunited and regenerated and once again revolutionary. 

That's my rocky point, my simple song, my simple gift, my demons and my better angels, my somewhere, somehow, someday. 

Zag!

FHNSAB

 

Re: management style...agreed. I guess on the other we'll see I guess. 

[MikeD]

5 hours ago, JoshClements403 said:

Honestly I'm excited. Some excellent music available. Personally I'm hoping for a Candide show

That is what I said to the guy I was sitting next to at Clifton. 

[MikeD]

21 hours ago, Fan of the Arts said:

And they certainly are not at Cadet squeaky clean yet!

Fan of the Arts 

I'm not sure this show is designed to be squeaky clean, from seeing it at Clifton. I love the show, and personally don't care where they place, but I am not sure it is designed to align with how corps are judged.

 

 

[henry7184]

21 hours ago, George Dixon said:

Yeah uh I won't be in grief if they finish 7h instead of sixth. They have more content and GE scores are improving. So if they can clean they will win that battle. I do agree the changes have been mostly sideways or detracting and as you say I'm not too surprised. It's so obvious what needs to be adjusted yet they won't do it

#godcomplex 

There is no battle to be had. It's over. They are not beating BAC and they sure as hell aren't beating Cavies. Nearly ever single change was for the worst. And they don't have more content than anyone ahead of them. Not by a long shot. 

[George Dixon]

9 minutes ago, henry7184 said:

There is no battle to be had. It's over. They are not beating BAC and they sure as hell aren't beating Cavies. Nearly ever single change was for the worst. And they don't have more content than anyone ahead of them. Not by a long shot. 

There's an echo in here 

 

[jwillis35]

Well done Cadets2. That will be a great vehicle as it cleans. Nice size corps. Only a few holes to fill.  DCA should be fun this fall. Some nice drill at the end there. 

[E3D]

5 hours ago, George Dixon said:

Yeah uh let's put things in perspective and half of what you say here isn't even factually accurate. Go find another corps to root for. This isn't about you buddy 

Seems to me there is a lack of respect for the Alumni opinion with respect to the Cadets, as in your reply post to 87cadet. Obviously they are more than a fan and have an opinion which you told him or her to find some other corps to "root" for. That is a sad reply.

Then you follow it up with pointing it out that it is not about the person who posted their opinion. I would argue it is in many ways and the more they (alumni) get reply's like this in the thread from people who ---I have no clue if the marched or not is a bit depressing. 

The Alumni has a responsibility to stand up and support the corps, ,,, along with that they have a voice in the direction. 

I totally disagree with your reproach and reply to someone who does not like the current design or season of the cadets. The members deserve a better fan. 

 

Edited August 5, 2017 by E3D