conference calls - what's the point?
My boss has a rubbish job. He's gone on holiday for 2 weeks and left me in charge of some stuff. Mostly this involves attending conference calls on his behalf.
Yesterday I was on a call with the Chief Technology Officer of the division no less. Poor sod, he was trying to get a straight answer out of Slippery-manager from the far-away-office. After an hour and a half I'm still not entirely sure we got an answer out of him. The question was quite simple, 'how long will it take to do this bit of work?'. The answer should be 'a couple of weeks'. I think in the end he came up with '3 to 4 weeks' but only after prevaricating for a blue-age about utter rubbish 'well, we have to spend weeks testing this random thing on the off chance that we might find a bug' and other nonsense.
Who's idea was this...'on the off change me might find a bug', what a load of rot. I'd never be able to get away with that sort of attitude. Imagine, "I'm not writing that document for you because there is a chance that you are too stupid to understand it". This may be true, but it's no way to run a business.
There's another meeting in a fortnight to discuss that fact that nothing has happened and we're no closer to any decisions being made. Fortunately the boss will be back by then and he can deal with it.
Management - definitely not worth the money.
Yesterday I was on a call with the Chief Technology Officer of the division no less. Poor sod, he was trying to get a straight answer out of Slippery-manager from the far-away-office. After an hour and a half I'm still not entirely sure we got an answer out of him. The question was quite simple, 'how long will it take to do this bit of work?'. The answer should be 'a couple of weeks'. I think in the end he came up with '3 to 4 weeks' but only after prevaricating for a blue-age about utter rubbish 'well, we have to spend weeks testing this random thing on the off chance that we might find a bug' and other nonsense.
Who's idea was this...'on the off change me might find a bug', what a load of rot. I'd never be able to get away with that sort of attitude. Imagine, "I'm not writing that document for you because there is a chance that you are too stupid to understand it". This may be true, but it's no way to run a business.
There's another meeting in a fortnight to discuss that fact that nothing has happened and we're no closer to any decisions being made. Fortunately the boss will be back by then and he can deal with it.
Management - definitely not worth the money.
posted by Daisy Twoshoes at 4:15 PM
1 Comments:
Sounds like a classic "rear guard action" to me Daisy. I've lost count of the number of times I've been scape goated by commiting to what sounded like a reasonble deadline only to find that the requirements change beyond all recognition four hours before delivery..... and some how its my fault?! I am guilty of using the tactic of over estimating a timescale and then delivering early thereby catching the monkeys off guard before they get a chance to change their minds or think about what they really wanted. The requirements still change, I just avoid getting caught up in the blame-storming. I like to call it incremental delivery. Naughty old me! ;o)
Dig a little deeper and you'll probably find slippery manager has been publicly flogged (metaphorically) for not delivering something he didn't know he was even supposed to at some time in the past. Doesn't make the behaviour right but it does make it understandable.
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