- I don't feel at all rested on my return
- I don't remember the days passing
- People seem surprised that I am back
- Nothing significant seems to have happened while I was away
FO and Arkel avoided me all morning, being the two most likely to have anything useful to tell me in terms of status. Because nothing had changed, I should have guessed that they had imparted all useful information via their absence. My team were not so lucky - I rounded them all up before the lunch-time sugar-crunch and had a catch-up. Five young female faces turned to me in expectation as if waiting for me to fill them with wisdom, as usual; but I needed them to talk. The training is going slowly, and, like chickens, if you don't teach them to talk each day, they forget how to squawk. Tweet broke the silence, and opened the flood-gates. She was also the only one to genuinely ask about my holiday. The others had all just been polite about it. Maybe it's just that I'm more enamoured of her than the others.
Without being overly egotistic, I have always held the belief that nothing ever happens around here unless I instigate it, and then preferably chase it up. As tiring as this is, and also distracting, it gets things done. I get nothing done, but the company as a whole seems to progress, mostly. Everything that Arkel and FO, in particular, asked to help out on, in terms of handing things over for completion, before I left, has been replaced by a new series of requests placed on my team.
In one respect, this is the fundamental problem with the way the business is run - priorities change so fast that it's hardly worth prioritising anything. WHatever decisions are made today become irrelevent tomorrow, and forgotten by the day after. The only way around this is through introspection, audit trails, reflection. These take time, and we don't have the time because we keep changing priorities and everything has to be done yesterday.
I think that the best policy for moving forward is the simplest one. We just learn to say "no". The power in those two letters, when spoken and followed up by action, cannot be underestimated. If sections within this company refuse to do things because it is impossible, rather than buckling under the weight of their own cowardice, then things will be achieved - something will be achieved. If priorities cannot change as rapidly as they have been - are not allowed to change - then they will not. Wasted effort on expected problems that never arrive will be better channeled on planned work.
This sounds idealistic, and also impossible for a small company. However, for a company to succeed, it must have a plan; if plans change, then either it needs a different plan, or else it needs new resources to fullfil both the old and new plan. If it can't get new resources (as a small company), then it cannot succeed with two plans. Logic dictates that it is not possible. To proceed with two plans is to ensure a planned failure, and that is the least desired plan of all.
