A lot of things are old-fashioned on here — and my willingness to admit mistakes is one of ’em. With the right spirit, you can even have fun with it — as I did in Elephant in the Room Award. It’s under Responsibility & Then Some:
Where you’ll find “I See You Fell on Your Sword”:
Speaking of responsibility:
A manager I’d never met returned from maternity leave — only to find that the reporting she was looking forward to, wasn’t laid out the way she wanted. I just did what the BRD stated, but I don’t care how it happened — she’s not happy and my name’s on it. I asked her to come down to my desk to rework the requirements. 3 hours later, I had everything I needed (and the next morning — so did she): Since I spent all night in the office retooling her reports.
I could go on all day (and not just on IT ). My background goes way back to industrial environments — and then some!
And oh yeah . . .
I’ve always been a burden:
As told on Runnin’ Down a Dream:
Ah, the pooh-poohers of possibility: Forever on the front lines of lowering the bar while I’m trying to raise it — you’ve been a constant companion almost all my life. Where would I be without you?
Remember that guitar in a museum in Tennessee
And the nameplate on the glass brought back twenty melodies
And the scratches on the face
Told of all the times he fell
Singin’ every story he could tell . . .
With all that in mind . . .
Perhaps you’ll understand why I found it preposterous that Enterprise Architecture wasted 6 weeks (accomplishing absolutely nothing and absolving themselves for it). And the icing on the cake was our team playing along with this charade. Never mind what they really thought — let’s burn the guy who calls a spade a spade.
All under the guise of your precious professionalism — while I’d been in a living hell for 6 months. More on that later, but it seems I’m more concerned about ECOLAB wasting time and money than you are.
After another late-night email to update her, the disappointment was palpable when I woke up to hear about a few minor mistakes. Never mind that her attitude and approach were preventing me from properly addressing these problems all along:
Though I was working on validation processes to address those concerns we shared.
And while she’s faulting me for my imperfections: I’m dealing with improperly formatted files, column names requiring me to change some packages, and criteria changes previously unaccounted for. But I worked with what I had to get the job done. I’m not saying those file issues are her fault or anyone else’s. They are simply a product of our fundamental breakdown in communication.
Had we just talked to each other from time to time — we would have resolved them and anything else that came our way. It would be easy to just blame the BA and my managers (along with the mysterious forces behind the scenes):
But ultimately — I blame you . . .
Justice and decency are carried in the heart of the captain — or they be not aboard
— Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)
You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem . . . then you solve the next one . . . and then the next. And If you solve enough problems, you get to come home
When I interviewed at ECOLAB, they impressed me with how concerned they were about being late — expressing how out of character it was for them. “Sorry about that” would have satisfied me, but I loved that it didn’t satisfy them.
I half-jokingly said . . .
What matters is that I was here on time
And with that we were off and running — turning a minor matter into something of significance.
I felt comfortable with them from start to finish. And they didn’t hold my job-hopping history against me like so many others. It’s hard to blame ’em at this point, as a lifetime of holding companies accountable doesn’t translate on a resume (or anywhere else, for that matter). Which is why I created this imagery in hopes of hiring managers seeing the bigger picture:
Dictionary.com defines “insight” as:
Penetrating mental vision or discernment; faculty of seeing into inner character or underlying truth
What Real Leadership Looks Like is a short story about a manager who set the gold standard for rising to the occasion. But it would be unfair to equate that situation to ECOLAB — especially since I think my managers understood me quite well. On the whole, they treated me fairly — but there was always something in the way of them handling her. Even without authority over that analyst, they should have been able to deal with someone they damn well knew was a problem.
But I’m more interested in why they felt compelled to come up with a “creative solution” in the first place.
That “need” is buried in the message that soon follows. Context is key and everybody knows it, but that awareness goes right out the window when context is inconvenient. By the time of this message, I’d bent over backwards for this BA (both during and after her medical leave). Her absence was felt by everyone — but no one more than me (which I’ll address later). During deployments, I’d get up in the middle of the night to see if she needed anything (and there were times I jumped out of bed if I heard from her on Teams).
In the spirt of “keep moving”: One hiccup could blow a whole day (throwing off our morning meetings and narrow window of opportunity in time zones).
Nobody asked me to do that, but I did what needed to be done. And besides, I owed her (just like I owed ECOLAB). What led to the opening bit below was some of the most obnoxious behavior I’ve ever seen in my career. But that’s not what I really care about it: What infuriated me is that we’ve got a job to do, and her endless griping was getting in the way.
But the larger story lies within what he wrote after his frustration with me:
Rick, I asked you yesterday to step back from this and let me work through this. The escalation of emails has now put me in a very compromising position. . . . I now have to spend my weekend figuring out what to do next.
— [Manager2] 2/9 8:15 AM
Translation:
Politics were hamstringing him from properly addressing the problem (allowing the intellectually lazy to fault them for failing to navigate through nonsense your culture conditions).
I know the feeling — all too well!
They didn’t need a “creative solution” to pick up the phone the same day I took issue with Enterprise Architecture’s incredibly half-assed ways of implementing a new tool. I’ve never seen anything like it — and I’ve been around! I could not believe my ears when their muddled mandate was made even more confusing with each meeting.
Lemme get this straight: You wanted us to evaluate your tool to see if it’s a fit, but you’re gonna force its adoption whether it is or not? And if that’s the deal, fine — but don’t tap dance around it: Just get to work and do what ya gotta do. But that would require you to start asking questions to find out exactly what that work would be, wouldn’t it!
Thanks to the BA doing what she does best, I got what I needed inside of a week. They had 6 and had nothing. How could they when they didn’t bother talking to the people doing the work? What’s all the more absurd is that with existing solutions on a silver platter — you could rebuild it all in 6 weeks. And yet you’re sitting there excusing these people for their pathetic performance. That’s got politics written all over it — as I know for a fact that’s not how my managers really felt.
All the more insulting to my intelligence was the notion that this was a “team effort.” In what parallel universe?
By furthering this façade with excuses, it allowed them to rationalize their ways (and I’d seen a lifetime of that in the last 6 months alone). And the icing on the cake: Acting as though I’m territorial in my resistance (never mind that’s got nothin’ to do with it). If you wanna replace my work with a new tool — then do it, but do so intelligently. I saw nothing of the kind (not to mention the significant loss in functionality that didn’t seem to be a factor for consideration).
That’s not to suggest it’s a bad tool — it’s whether or not it fits the bill.
Your outfit should be driving that discovery — not ours. But for my part — I would have told you everything you need to know had you simply asked. And since I’d never even heard of the tool (and you’re trying to jam an implementation into timelines with little margin for error): It’s ludicrous that you’re screwing around seeking our advice:
Instead of kicking it into gear with an expert who could pull it off with no problem.
And without question — it could have been done had you done it right. But even after wasting all that time, you still could have delivered by the deadline: All you had to do was cancel your aimless meetings and get in the game. To be fair, there are competing forces in play here — with the powers that be pushing this one-size-fits-all approach (so Enterprise Architecture is not entirely at fault).
Nevertheless, they screwed up no matter how you slice it. But instead of simply recognizing that (which is critical — as taking responsibility fosters how to adjust accordingly):
It was just more of the same — and it shows!
Contrast their attitude with what I wrote in Some End-of-Year Thoughts. There was not a trace of reflection coming out of Enterprise Architecture. On top of a complete lack of accountability — this crew acts as though they have no understanding of buy-in. Even if we had no choice in adopting it:
Why not get in the weeds from the get-go and show what your tool can do (by having a solid understanding of what we need it to do)?
The opening quote borrowed from the one below:
The worth of man lies not in the truth which he possesses, or believes that he possesses, but in the honest endeavor which he puts forth to secure that truth; for not by the possession of, but by the search after, truth, are his powers enlarged, wherein, alone, consists his ever-increasing perfection. Possession fosters content, indolence, and pride.
— Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Einstein’s is just a catchier version of the one that requires work — and work is where the rubber meets the road. I’m old-fashioned that way too.
I can’t imagine what it must be like having to plan and execute a global project under the pressure of impossible deadlines — facing a never-ending flood of obstacles (and delivering time after time). But it confounds me no end that people of such capability on the big stuff, could blow it so easily on the “small” stuff. To be sure, I should have been seeking a better understanding of the long-term from the start:
And not speaking up once I started having concerns — was a major mistake.
There was a time when it would have been unthinkable for me to stay silent. But a lifetime of taking on systemic problems that people insist on sticking to with pride — has taken its toll. Then there’s the fact that I fell into a lull on this hurry-up-and-wait project.
Sooner or later though — the old me was gonna kick in and say what need to be said: Like so many times before.
But by the time Purolite rolled around last summer, I found I wasn’t the only one who had concerns. Manager1 made it clear in a meeting that I’d be driving all development going forward. I was delighted to hear that, and thankfully — I didn’t have to say a word.
Just one problem:
The BA wasn’t on that call — and strangely, I never heard another word about it. Completely out of character for me, I let it go. At that point, it hadn’t become a big problem — but the writing was on the wall.
We Had a Window and Lost It
Things had been frosty between us for a while, but nothing like the open hostility that was to come. She saved us by temporarily returning from medical leave a couple of times, so you gotta hand to her for incredible dedication. But once she got word that I’d be taking over her database duties, we never recovered (though I thought we were on our way at one point).
To be fair, this news came out of nowhere.
And with all the burdens she had going on outside of work, I can understand it being a bit of a blow. But this was not a reflection on her performance (and nobody thought that but her). As this move would address our shared concerns, it made no sense for her to take an antagonistic tack now. But she took offense over anything she perceived as a slight (even an innocuous DevOps @mention she interpreted as negative).
And while we were putting our Issue Tracker in place, she fought me every step of the way. When you’re defining a process on the fly, ya gotta have some patience while we figure out what works best.
Just because you’re getting too many notifications now — don’t mean that you’re going to.
When you’re taking an entirely reactive role how a tool is designed — don’t complain when I don’t configure it all to your liking from the get-go. I will do what I can to meet your approval, but you gotta give me a chance. Don’t complain about what you don’t like and take issue with what you don’t instantly understand:
Just ask me and we’ll work it out.
Our Issue Tracker wasn’t just a tool to build a better flow for the exchange of requirements — it was also a chance to reconnect in how we communicate. She had no such notion. All this wasted time and energy over nothing. Instead of seizing on multiple opportunities to grow, she squandered ’em all.
Contrast her attitude with my colleague’s below — as kind as they come with the welcoming of knowledge to match. The Skeletoes Situation comically captures the absurdity of the story, but it breaks my heart to this day that I didn’t have a chance to work with Roopa longer.
The wiser version of me would have tolerated that department’s resident jackass just for the joy of working with her.
She was all heart — and it shows:
I’ll never live that down — and I don’t want to!
You’d never guess that a guy so incurious in the face of inquiry would be a member of Mensa — “the largest and oldest high IQ society in the world.” It’s all the more absurd when you consider that curiosity is at the core of Mensa’s mandate:
Smack-dab at the center of their universe . . .
And that — is a thread through everything I write about:
People decorating their walls with window dressing (be it a building or bio). Your precious pledges, mission statements, and Vision & Values handbooks that have no bearing on reality. Some circles are not burdened by squaring their walk with their talk.
They seem to think that advertising virtue equates to embodying it.
Whatever her frustrations with me (some of which were warranted): Now we’re going to fix all that — and then some! But she went from frosty to frigid in no time flat — clinging to the past while we’re working on the future. As shown below, I tactfully tried to tell her that we should work this out on our own (removing management from my response). And right on cue, she copied ’em right back (refusing to simply pick up the phone and have a pleasant call to iron it all out).
On a global project of this magnitude (particularly with a limited widow to work together):
It’s pure folly to think you can run a shop smoothly when two of the most essential people for processing the results — can’t even have a one-on-one conversation:
And hadn’t done so since sometime last year!
