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...