FO did a presentation yesterday. I cringe at the thought. He'd sent both me and Arkel a copy beforehand, and I went through and noticed his dyslexic acronyms, misspellings of names, general rambling nature, and started using the notes section to ask questions as feedback. It was only an internal presentation, and FO had an hour or two to correct it, but he was fluttering about behind me, discussing the finer points of where he knew I would disagree within five minutes of my receiving the draft (with a superfluous 'r').
When he presented, the big screen was filled with my corrected version, and he had my notes in his lap. As satisfying as that seems, it makes me feel a little guilty that I contributed to, and somehow endorsed the whole thing.
He and I have very different styles of presenting, as well as speaking. He tends to ramble, with sentences left incomplete, running into each other, having no point or topic, and just giving an impression that something was said. When I ramble, I complete every sentence - and I don't care how long it takes, but I'm determined to get to the bottom of that topic, do it to death, and get to that full-stop. Eventually.
FO thinks in bullet points. His conversations are slides. They have a title, which somehow related to, or is a reminder of, the intended content. The lines seem to go on forever (he likes to pack 20+ lines per slide), and they end abruptly, with smaller and smaller fonts petering out.
I think in sentences and paragraphs. Sometimes my sentences are paragraphs, but that's fine. They are complete within themselves. When I do a presentation, each slide is a few salient points of note to counterbalance what I'm saying - reminders to me and the audience. If you listen to me, and have the points and understand them, you're in. With FO, if you read the slide, then you've missed what he was saying, and that was the important explanation of what should have been put in the slide.
Am I over-using my co-worker as a bad example of presentation practice? Perhaps. It is a common enough mistake, though. Someone who hasn't been a consultant, or hasn't been a teacher or trainer, or had to present to a wide and varied audience will think of a presentation as delivering an argument, or a brain dump. A presentation is really a way of getting people to agree with you, to think like you, to gain from your knowledge and experience, preferably without a great deal of evaluation on their part. People should nod along with you - not falling asleep - and not have creased brows trying to work out what you're trying to say.
A friend of mine used to offer a Mars Bar for the best question after each of his seminars. At so little cost, he got a lot of attention from people who were more often than not just filling in their lunch hour with some brain junkfood.
Life is not a series of slides, it is an essay, an epic, a series, all punctuated as the writer sees fit, not based on how much can be squeezed into a page without it being unreadable from a certain distance by a myopic audience. Life should be savoured, relished, presented well, and the best moments devoured again and again because they take you back to that time, that feeling. Life shouldn't need animation to attract attention, or sounds to distract, because the imagination that is the audience of life can do all of this, and more, if we let it.
Don't think in powerpoint, I say. Think in grandiose sentences that stretch your communications skills and draw the reader into your imagination, your story, your Life.
21 September, 2006
Lend a Hand
I can't believe it's been a week since FO hijacked my meeting to spout his draft business priorities.
You'll be pleased to learn that the drones were missing from this now weekly event (that's two weeks in a row, so it must be regular). Doodles was going to be excluded as non-essential, so I didn't bother ringing him. He rang us five minutes in, and we kept talking as if he knew what was going on. He couldn't possibly have done, because my report, which works like an agenda, had only been sent out an hour before, and Gabriel had convinced me to squeeze "just one more wafer" of an item onto it.
Big mistake. FO tore it to shreds. I know he's been ill. I know he's having a hard time of it, but there's no excuse for ripping into a perfectly good idea as if it was the worst thing ever hear.
It was a pro-active approach to dealing with system overload. I'd proposed something similar months ago with zero response, but things have been moving along, and Polo has instigated some work to get the stats needed to determine when we would reach levels of diminished service. I wasn't too happy with how it was going to be implemented, but Tank and I could discuss that over time.
FO said that there had to be something fundamentally wrong with the system that we had to even consider an apporach to dealing with overload. He said that we should bring in someone from the outside - a consultant - to give us some pointers. I told him what the consultant was likely to say, with Tank and Gabriel nodding in industry knowledge unison, and then FO snapped at me!
"You don't know that! They might come up with something we haven't thought of!"
Redundancy is the key. Redundancy costs money for something you don't use. So much for cutting costs.
I know consultants. I've been a consultant. The only purpose in life as a consultant is to consult. You don't necessarily have to do a good job, just continue to be employable. Do something. Sound impressive. Sound certain. Convince the people who, like FO, don't trust the experts around them. Learn about those people. Pander to them. Confirm their suspicions. Leave quickly and send the bill before the dust settles and the internal experts have had time to digest a lengthy report full of meaningless techno-babble and pat statements from an industry study.
It wasn't the career for me. I've met too many people who were essentially unemployable who do quite well as consultants. There are few good ones.
What was fundamentally missing from FO was trust. He has no faith in the technical people because he doesn't understand them. He doesn't understand what they do, and he's afraid that they are cleverer and more knowledgeable than him (not the same thing). He is used to working in an aggressive work environment, where people like Polo and Gabriel, who have no real ambition, should be after his job - not his actual job, but his status. It's not paranoia, just his experience.
I prefer to work in a collaborative environment. If someone gives me an opinion or estimate, I might raise an eyebrow or two, but I trust that
1. They're not trying to stall and inflate that estimate because they want goof-off time
2. They have some idea of what they're talking about
If we don't trust the people who work for us, or the people who work with us, then it's time to take a good hard long look at ourselves and ask what the hell we're doing working in such an environment!
You'll be pleased to learn that the drones were missing from this now weekly event (that's two weeks in a row, so it must be regular). Doodles was going to be excluded as non-essential, so I didn't bother ringing him. He rang us five minutes in, and we kept talking as if he knew what was going on. He couldn't possibly have done, because my report, which works like an agenda, had only been sent out an hour before, and Gabriel had convinced me to squeeze "just one more wafer" of an item onto it.
Big mistake. FO tore it to shreds. I know he's been ill. I know he's having a hard time of it, but there's no excuse for ripping into a perfectly good idea as if it was the worst thing ever hear.
It was a pro-active approach to dealing with system overload. I'd proposed something similar months ago with zero response, but things have been moving along, and Polo has instigated some work to get the stats needed to determine when we would reach levels of diminished service. I wasn't too happy with how it was going to be implemented, but Tank and I could discuss that over time.
FO said that there had to be something fundamentally wrong with the system that we had to even consider an apporach to dealing with overload. He said that we should bring in someone from the outside - a consultant - to give us some pointers. I told him what the consultant was likely to say, with Tank and Gabriel nodding in industry knowledge unison, and then FO snapped at me!
"You don't know that! They might come up with something we haven't thought of!"
Redundancy is the key. Redundancy costs money for something you don't use. So much for cutting costs.
I know consultants. I've been a consultant. The only purpose in life as a consultant is to consult. You don't necessarily have to do a good job, just continue to be employable. Do something. Sound impressive. Sound certain. Convince the people who, like FO, don't trust the experts around them. Learn about those people. Pander to them. Confirm their suspicions. Leave quickly and send the bill before the dust settles and the internal experts have had time to digest a lengthy report full of meaningless techno-babble and pat statements from an industry study.
It wasn't the career for me. I've met too many people who were essentially unemployable who do quite well as consultants. There are few good ones.
What was fundamentally missing from FO was trust. He has no faith in the technical people because he doesn't understand them. He doesn't understand what they do, and he's afraid that they are cleverer and more knowledgeable than him (not the same thing). He is used to working in an aggressive work environment, where people like Polo and Gabriel, who have no real ambition, should be after his job - not his actual job, but his status. It's not paranoia, just his experience.
I prefer to work in a collaborative environment. If someone gives me an opinion or estimate, I might raise an eyebrow or two, but I trust that
1. They're not trying to stall and inflate that estimate because they want goof-off time
2. They have some idea of what they're talking about
If we don't trust the people who work for us, or the people who work with us, then it's time to take a good hard long look at ourselves and ask what the hell we're doing working in such an environment!
20 September, 2006
Raise your hand if you can hear me
After yesterday's gripe about having no-one to trust when I run off to the Orient for that well-deserved break from this mad-house, I was approached by both FO and Arkel to say something along the lines of "I'm willing to keep an eye on your girls while you're gone", and I have already mentioned my attitude towards either from a management perspective.
But this got me thinking about one of my pet areas of interest - management theory. Neither of these two chappies has what could be called a management background - they have industry knowledge, professional skills, vast experience, but no formal management training. That could be said for anyone in the company - including me, but I have the advantage of having done some thinking over the years on the topic. Both Gabriel and Polo have true people management experience, but I don't think either really thinks much about it, and, due to their industry experience, it's mostly by luck that they meet with general success (or lack of failure).
In the mind of FO and Arkel, though, management is a process by which you ensure that the people you manage don't waste too much time on coffee breaks, don't sit around reading online newspapers (or blogs) or personal email, and effectively do what they are asked to do as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible, in the way that you tell them. People are a cost. If you are over budget, you must achieve fewer people. If you are swimming in cash, hire more.
How extraordinary! Hello? Are you out of the dark ages yet? I refuse to chain people to desks and get out a whip (or buy a slave to do the whipping for me) unless people are into that sort of thing; and what they do in the privacy of their bedroom is nobody's business until the mpeg turns up on the internet.
Where was I? Management! My people are intelligent, educated, semi-dedicated semi-professionals (none of them work in the 'field' of their training) - they have to be, because I hired them myself. Although I tell them, in broad sweeps, the goals of each task, and I sometimes provide them with tools and technical input to complete same, I do leave it up to them to find a way forward if they can, to complete things at their own pace (rather than by my estimate), and to present the results in their estimation of a reasonable manner.
This reminds me of a boss I once had who asked me to create a presentation for him. It took me half the day to get to a nice draft. We spent the other half of the day with him changing each slide individually because "he wouldn't have done it like that". From cost-effectiveness, he could have spent that latter half-day producing the thing himself, and I could have spent the whole day doing something useful and not getting frustrated.
It's these little moments that I've stored in the back of my mind and thought "I'll never do that to someone in my team", or else "That's a good way to deal with the situation". Although the former thoughts outnumber the latter, those latter are far more precious, and I value the people who can trigger them. Five year ago, Polo was one of those people. Since I dragged him into this company, I'm not as sure.
But this got me thinking about one of my pet areas of interest - management theory. Neither of these two chappies has what could be called a management background - they have industry knowledge, professional skills, vast experience, but no formal management training. That could be said for anyone in the company - including me, but I have the advantage of having done some thinking over the years on the topic. Both Gabriel and Polo have true people management experience, but I don't think either really thinks much about it, and, due to their industry experience, it's mostly by luck that they meet with general success (or lack of failure).
In the mind of FO and Arkel, though, management is a process by which you ensure that the people you manage don't waste too much time on coffee breaks, don't sit around reading online newspapers (or blogs) or personal email, and effectively do what they are asked to do as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible, in the way that you tell them. People are a cost. If you are over budget, you must achieve fewer people. If you are swimming in cash, hire more.
How extraordinary! Hello? Are you out of the dark ages yet? I refuse to chain people to desks and get out a whip (or buy a slave to do the whipping for me) unless people are into that sort of thing; and what they do in the privacy of their bedroom is nobody's business until the mpeg turns up on the internet.
Where was I? Management! My people are intelligent, educated, semi-dedicated semi-professionals (none of them work in the 'field' of their training) - they have to be, because I hired them myself. Although I tell them, in broad sweeps, the goals of each task, and I sometimes provide them with tools and technical input to complete same, I do leave it up to them to find a way forward if they can, to complete things at their own pace (rather than by my estimate), and to present the results in their estimation of a reasonable manner.
This reminds me of a boss I once had who asked me to create a presentation for him. It took me half the day to get to a nice draft. We spent the other half of the day with him changing each slide individually because "he wouldn't have done it like that". From cost-effectiveness, he could have spent that latter half-day producing the thing himself, and I could have spent the whole day doing something useful and not getting frustrated.
It's these little moments that I've stored in the back of my mind and thought "I'll never do that to someone in my team", or else "That's a good way to deal with the situation". Although the former thoughts outnumber the latter, those latter are far more precious, and I value the people who can trigger them. Five year ago, Polo was one of those people. Since I dragged him into this company, I'm not as sure.
19 September, 2006
Running Away
I'm running away for two weeks for what appears to be an annual globe-trotting expedition. Shanghai this time. The largest massed pipe band in China, apparently. I did Edinburgh last year for PipeFest. That was big.
Anyway, enough about me. Two weeks away means two weeks away from this office, these people. Omigod! What are they going to do without me? How will they cope? I'm not being overly egotistic, but my girls rely on me heavily on a day to day basis. I don't just direct them, but I also support their efforts, in their attempt to do what I tell them to. It's a cross between situational- and micro- management. I manage each of them as needed at the time - as long as they're following my orders. I didn't realise that Spin was already off on her holiday this week. I was wondering why she was so late, and Owl reminded me. Oops. We were going to coincide holidays, and I saw that as a relief, but then she couldn't get flights ... Owl and Booker are my three-day-a-week girls, so they don't need as much forward planning. I asked them all to send me an email and work out what they were doing and could do over the period, and so far Booker is the only respondee with "I'll run out of work before you get back". Succinct, but useless. Meanwhile, Anne, who I've been protecting from Doodles' excessive requests, will be my only girl in today. As my only full-timer, I have to worry more about her. We've got time to chat, anyway. I set up a meeting to discuss ideas tomorrow, and I've got a half-page list of stuff that could get done, but I'll guarantee I'll come back to blank faces and nothing achieved. Now I know how Polo felt when he left his people for a week or so.
The other part of the problem is finding someone to look after the girls for me. They need support. They need someone who can solve their problems, or is willing to find someone who can. I've been thinking of senior people all this time - I asked FO, and he was non-committal. I wouldn't trust Arkel, because his staff of one never knows what's going on. Gabriel is too busy. The list goes on. And then I got this brainwave - Tweet. She's an unofficial bit-time member of my team, knows her stuff, can talk anyone into anything (eventually) when she can't do it herself, and she has no delusions of grandeur. Apparently, she wants to get into project management, so this is just another step in that direction. The only other option is Red, and I don't know when he'll be in, so I can't make plans. I'd trust him, but I have no idea if he has the support skills my girls need.
I feel much happier now, having talked it through. I can relax and listen to the crowd shout unintelligibly at the band, hoping that they're saying "Brilliant! Encore!" when they're much more likely to be shouting "Shut off that damned racket!"
Anyway, enough about me. Two weeks away means two weeks away from this office, these people. Omigod! What are they going to do without me? How will they cope? I'm not being overly egotistic, but my girls rely on me heavily on a day to day basis. I don't just direct them, but I also support their efforts, in their attempt to do what I tell them to. It's a cross between situational- and micro- management. I manage each of them as needed at the time - as long as they're following my orders. I didn't realise that Spin was already off on her holiday this week. I was wondering why she was so late, and Owl reminded me. Oops. We were going to coincide holidays, and I saw that as a relief, but then she couldn't get flights ... Owl and Booker are my three-day-a-week girls, so they don't need as much forward planning. I asked them all to send me an email and work out what they were doing and could do over the period, and so far Booker is the only respondee with "I'll run out of work before you get back". Succinct, but useless. Meanwhile, Anne, who I've been protecting from Doodles' excessive requests, will be my only girl in today. As my only full-timer, I have to worry more about her. We've got time to chat, anyway. I set up a meeting to discuss ideas tomorrow, and I've got a half-page list of stuff that could get done, but I'll guarantee I'll come back to blank faces and nothing achieved. Now I know how Polo felt when he left his people for a week or so.
The other part of the problem is finding someone to look after the girls for me. They need support. They need someone who can solve their problems, or is willing to find someone who can. I've been thinking of senior people all this time - I asked FO, and he was non-committal. I wouldn't trust Arkel, because his staff of one never knows what's going on. Gabriel is too busy. The list goes on. And then I got this brainwave - Tweet. She's an unofficial bit-time member of my team, knows her stuff, can talk anyone into anything (eventually) when she can't do it herself, and she has no delusions of grandeur. Apparently, she wants to get into project management, so this is just another step in that direction. The only other option is Red, and I don't know when he'll be in, so I can't make plans. I'd trust him, but I have no idea if he has the support skills my girls need.
I feel much happier now, having talked it through. I can relax and listen to the crowd shout unintelligibly at the band, hoping that they're saying "Brilliant! Encore!" when they're much more likely to be shouting "Shut off that damned racket!"
18 September, 2006
Getting an Early Rise
I am an early riser. I make no apology for that. I have been since I was a lad. I used to be one of the first at school (travelling quite a distance by bus), and have lived much farther away from the big smoke, with the necessity to continue the practice of catching half-empty trains. I can only recall Polo beating me into the office once. Nobody else comes close.
They're a weird lot, those who do turn up at what I would call a reasonable hour - apart from my team, who know I'll be here when they arrive. Stripe lives some way off, and likes to leave early; he says "hi" when he gets in, and we usually have a chat a little later over the coffee machine (it doesn't seem to mind). Polo will tend to do a long day, turning up after a work-out at the gym, but still quite early; he eats breakfast here. Hagrid turns up, says nothing, takes his seat, and gets on with his work. Gabriel also tends to sneak in, but is quite happy to accost me early if he wants something. But Bull - he ensures that everyone notices him. He's teaching Stripe a little bit of Spanish, and he keeps the girls entertained at lunch time - although I'm not sure what they talk about. He seems to be the kind of guy who is 'foreign' enough that he could be gay if it wasn't for the fact that he is in a steady heterosexual relationship. You can't not like him; I've never been turned down with a request, but often told that he can't do the work for an hour or two. He's that kind of guy - he'll slot you in somehow.
My girls have to be a little up like that. I almost insist on it. I like smiling faces around me, which is not why I specifically hire young women, but it helps in the interview. Mind you, Anne and Owl both need to brush up on their social skills. Booker is fine - she's just new to the area, and Spin is the kind of girl who should be able to make friends anywhere. It surprised me, then, a few weeks ago, when I found that none of them were mixing with the other teams. I set them a social awareness task to learn things about people I had chosen at random from the staff list.
Here's the interesting bit - Spin was the only one not to take the task seriously enough to achieve anything. She's just started working on finding out who Scruff is (she took two weeks to get him identified), and complains that he rushes through his coffee-making of a morning and won't talk.
I pulled the plug on my little task. There was no fun in it any more.
I shouldn't grumble too much - I've said barely a word to the new chappy over in Sales. I'm waiting to see if he lasts a week or two before I'll expend any effort.
Booker's just turned up, and I don't have my headphones on, so my day has begun.
15 September, 2006
Don't get me Wrong
Don't get me wrong, Doodles is a nice guy. You're expecting a "but" there, and I thought I could leave it as a rhetorical one, if only there was such a thing. I had to lose a body a few months back because a given market is no longer a company priority. Since then, my remaining body (sorry, I should call her a resource, perhaps even a person) has been supporting that low priority market and not doing her real job - that being, whatever I tell her to do. Poor Anne gets emails from Doodles, forwards to me (if he hadn't) and then shakes in her seat until I notice the email, or until she can attract my attention and ask if she's allowed to do the work for him. The poor woman has kittens, having no ability to make her own decisions, and no desire to second guess me. I'm happy to ignore his emails - his market, not my problem.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a really nice guy - especially to my crew. I make sure I tell them that at least once a week. But I don't think anyone could make Anne feel any more secure in her job. Let's face it, she saw what happened to her former co-worker. We sent him off with an over-sized card in compensation for the amount of remorse. It wasn't my decision. In fact, if anyone had asked which of the two of them I would prefer to have lost, I would have been stumped for several seconds.
Anyway, Doodles, who apparently has no time to do anything for himself, and has a staff of one who spends more time in hospital than most people spend reading emails or writing blogs, didn't beg for my help, he merely dumped it and ran. I've been helping him out because I'm a nice guy (remember?) but no more. I fumed my way off to FO, just to make my feelings felt on a wider scale and because I was ignoring Doodles' email. FO's eventual solution was to gather a scattering of folk around the conference phone to find out what the hell Doodles was really after. Fair enough; I'd just assumed he was talking out of his posterior.
Don't get me wrong - FO has his moments of clarity - but this was just another opportunity for him to waffle. I'd already done my Friday afternoon, post-lunch, avoid-doing-anything-productive-while-your-sugar-level-drops seminar, introducing all my girls to what I used to do when I was a real researcher, and letting them all have nap-time away from the boisterous laughter of the admin staff in the lunch room. Now was supposed to be my time to snooze.
FO finished with a list of objectives (surprise, surprise) written on my post-it notes, with my pen (in his hand-writing), ensuring that Doodles ended up having to do most things himself - somehow. There was talk of him hiring his girlfriend in the short term. There was a general sigh of relief around the table. Arkel, in particular, had kept his mouth shut to protect his offsider, limiting his twitching with a great deal of strain showing on his face.
Don't get me wrong, I'm quite happy to do the odd thing for Doodles when the mood takes me, he can find me, and I can't think of anything less demeaning for Anne to do at the time, or quickly enough. I am not, however, going to run his personal work pool from a distance, using my bodies. I've got enough problems ensuring that my empire doesn't shrink. All my girls are being sucked into my research, and I'm trying to get Arkel to lend me his. I've written him an email, but he doesn't seem to be responding too quickly.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a really nice guy - especially to my crew. I make sure I tell them that at least once a week. But I don't think anyone could make Anne feel any more secure in her job. Let's face it, she saw what happened to her former co-worker. We sent him off with an over-sized card in compensation for the amount of remorse. It wasn't my decision. In fact, if anyone had asked which of the two of them I would prefer to have lost, I would have been stumped for several seconds.
Anyway, Doodles, who apparently has no time to do anything for himself, and has a staff of one who spends more time in hospital than most people spend reading emails or writing blogs, didn't beg for my help, he merely dumped it and ran. I've been helping him out because I'm a nice guy (remember?) but no more. I fumed my way off to FO, just to make my feelings felt on a wider scale and because I was ignoring Doodles' email. FO's eventual solution was to gather a scattering of folk around the conference phone to find out what the hell Doodles was really after. Fair enough; I'd just assumed he was talking out of his posterior.
Don't get me wrong - FO has his moments of clarity - but this was just another opportunity for him to waffle. I'd already done my Friday afternoon, post-lunch, avoid-doing-anything-productive-while-your-sugar-level-drops seminar, introducing all my girls to what I used to do when I was a real researcher, and letting them all have nap-time away from the boisterous laughter of the admin staff in the lunch room. Now was supposed to be my time to snooze.
FO finished with a list of objectives (surprise, surprise) written on my post-it notes, with my pen (in his hand-writing), ensuring that Doodles ended up having to do most things himself - somehow. There was talk of him hiring his girlfriend in the short term. There was a general sigh of relief around the table. Arkel, in particular, had kept his mouth shut to protect his offsider, limiting his twitching with a great deal of strain showing on his face.
Don't get me wrong, I'm quite happy to do the odd thing for Doodles when the mood takes me, he can find me, and I can't think of anything less demeaning for Anne to do at the time, or quickly enough. I am not, however, going to run his personal work pool from a distance, using my bodies. I've got enough problems ensuring that my empire doesn't shrink. All my girls are being sucked into my research, and I'm trying to get Arkel to lend me his. I've written him an email, but he doesn't seem to be responding too quickly.
Cleaned out
I can't recall why I went past FO's office, but he had the big recycling bin parked in his doorway, his floor scattered with the contents of the boxes usually stacked beneath and around his desk. He was crawling around on the floor, shaking plastic folders and collecting the business cards that fell out. It concerned me somewhat that he was doing this while the company's stock trading was halted. It's a strange time to be having an enterprise-level 'clean out', but then, the auditors had just been through, and this was an opportunity to officially dispose of anything that they missed. I guess I was wondering if something more serious was happening that I should know about, and I don't know which was worse: that I was thinking it, or that I had to ask to be sure.
He looked even more harried than he had yesterday when we were talking about critical survival objectives, as if he'd had some sleep, but not enough. The lingering malady that causes him to cough up an inordinate amount of phlegm at inopportune moments in meetings is unlikely to abate unless he takes a different outlook on life and winds down. In a past life, he took his job too seriously, and it cost him a marriage. He's a serial monogamistic executive, dedicating his life to one company at a time. Sometimes I suspect he's planning a coup, and Bubble had better beware, but at other times he's hiding behind Bubble, ready to leap out and stab someone else in the back - preferably with Bubble's knife. But then, I know who really pulls Bubble's strings, and it's not his wife, either.
14 September, 2006
Business Priorities
Simultaneous occurrences easily intrigue when they don't annoy. It was my responsibility to gather the cognoscenti to discuss business priorities, so as to present a consistent story to the plebs on the factory floor. It was just my luck that the Board was pressuring FO and Bubble to do likewise upwards.
FO sent me his 'draft objectives' - with a superfluous 'r'. At the top of the list of critical success factors was "cut costs". My knee-jerk, tempered only slightly with the knowledge that he'd stayed up half the night thinking that one up, was that the easiest way to cut costs was to remove the executive. It was taken in a less magnanimous spirit than was intended.
My priorities were going to be along the lines of "who are the important clients?", or in the words of Red, "who do we burn?"
The meeting began after I got Doodles in on conference call. Of course he's got skype. FO smiled at the cost-cutting measure, and I pointed out that it was Doodles' personal skype, and he was not cutting our costs. A little more skyping and we got under way. I knew FO was going to hijack the meeting. We had three little pigs from the floor, plus Gabriel for this first such meeting. It was possibly the first time that they'd been exposed to FO's nomadic diatribe, let alone a business direction.
All well and good. My only purpose, when I got my chance, was trying to squeeze some new work in sideways - for Doodles; nothing I want done has high enough priority. FO's priorities meant that the customer was pretty low on the list, and so we sat and justified why we should push out something else in its place. More delays. Arkel was shaking like the last leaf in winter, but caved in and agreed that his customer would feel the flame. He wasn't happy, but he'll go and whinge about it to MadDog tomorrow, and nothing will come of it. We keep going around in circles, stabbing each other in the back as fast as we patch up someone else.
Suddenly, FO sprang into action - "how come that estimate is so high?"
"Woah there, FO, you can't ask that sort of question here - we're talking business priorities."
"I'm sorry, but I just want to know!" almost shouting, and making Gabriel (sitting beside me) almost jump backwards out of his seat.
"These guys are the ones who have to do the work, we have to trust their estimates."
"But ... but ..." spluttered the formerly formidable FO.
"Anyway, we're running out of time. Doodles has a customer to see, and Gabriel's got another meeting."
I gave FO a few minutes to cool down and went down to his office for a visit. I never sit down in there these days, happy to stand for an hour. It's easier to wave my hand about.
"Look, I'm not defending them for the sake of it, or going against you. I agree about the estimates, but I ask you - How long would it take you to do?"
"Umm ... but if they had a better solution, it shouldn't take long at all. They told me that these sort of mods would be easy."
"How long would it take you to do what needs to be done?"
Silence.
Gold.
"Anyway, you should be talking to Polo about this."
"Yeah, I'll have a word to Gabriel."
"No - Polo is more appropriate. You're scaring Gabriel, and that's unfair."
"But I'm the soft touch! MadDog and Bubble want to halve the engineering staff. They think that's all that's necessary."
"I think it's necessary to double it. Who do you think is more likely to be right?"
Silence.
Platinum.
"Anyway, I came up here to smooth things over, and I was reminded of a joke ..."
And I told him the one about when God designed Eve...
13 September, 2006
Meandering and Pondering
In the beginning, there was the word; and it was blog.
It was the best of dark and stormy blogs. It was the worst of dark and stormy blogs. Nobody upsets this little blog duck.
Now that lonelygrill12, or whatever that team called itself, has been revealed, it is time for the professionals to take over. Not professional scriptwriters - professional outpourers of the soul. I've been doing this sort of thing for most of my life, and experience must count for something.
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