The rightful way to make an employee unhappy

Management is a difficult art, management in big corporations is more difficult. Management in a corporation where the multicultural requirement is a need is even harder.

We all know it and, to a certain extent, we have to deal with it. We can’t expect everything works well and right, and we have to show flexibility and we have to be open to change and embrace the new but…

Let’s be real, no matter how much effort you put sometimes things are just not right.

When the environment is too toxic probably is better to leave than hoping for a change. 

There are plenty of ways a toxic company environment can make your life miserable, and usually, they try to use them all.

Sometimes the toxic environment is so strong that even the best manager has to comply with disgraceful attitudes (or leave).

But what is the sign of a toxic environment? the first sign is you do not stand it anymore. Sometimes is not a single event, but a set of rules that combined together with a bad management attitude make the mix toxic.

Let’s do some examples of rules and managers that can turn your working life into a nightmare. 

 

Micromanagement

This is a common nightmare. The manager want to check every single detail. Not in a helpful proactive way, but in a compulsory need to not give delegation or autonomy to the people.

Usually, micromanagement comes with an exaggerated manager ego (I am not right because I’m right, I am right because I am the Boss) and a fundamental mistrust of the other people.

Quite a sociopathic attitude? Not really is more common than we should expect. It happens that people promoted to a management position changes their attitude and adhere to this model.

Usually, the micromanager is also extremely rude and impolite, the kind of guy that calls you at 10 pm shouting if you do not answer immediately. You do not have the right to your personal life, your life should be built around your manager.

And, of course, the micromanager value your time in a different way, so no matter if you reach your goal, the important thing for the micromanager are:

• do it his-her way
• time, the more you stay at office the better (so it can control more?)

The point is if you are looking for a life balance, with this kind of manager the only way is to rule out your brain from your work, and just act like a robot. But I can assure you he-she will shout anyway

Yes Man

Do you know those managers that follow blindly company rules? Even the most stupid one? Have you ever worked in that environment?

This situation usually comes together with denial. Evidence does not touch the manager that will always find a good reason to justify company strategy. When they talk it seems that everyone (except you) is working in a fairyland where everyone helps, communication is perfect, the company treats employees like sons or daughters, and all are working for the greater good.

Of course, you that object that the reality is different are the point of failure of this model. If problems arise they have to be hidden or the blame has to be given to someone in a lower hierarchical status.

No roads no direction

Another typical thing that makes people unhappy is not to see directions, again a trait of many managers. Every change is allowed and you can’t see a strategy or purpose. Hard to be committed when you can’t see a good reason to do it. But every change has a reason, and if you do not cope is you that are resistant to change. So again you’re the problem. 

KPI or how to make clear you will never reach them

KPI (Key Performance Index) is another great instrument of torture if used well (and they know how to use it). Basically the idea is to put them at a non-reachable level, but in a way the fault is your one.

KPI is not necessarily a just a sales target which, by definition, is unreachable, but a complex set of manure used to drive you mad. The more your job is based on intellectual stuff the better will be your KPI used as a metric from someone that probably has no idea what your work actually is. But in the end, we are all replaceable, and so your work is not so important.

KPI is a fine agreement between two evil entities, your management hierarchy, and HR department. HR apparently usually put a lot of effort in designing non-understandable systems that seemed to used to target the employee to lower his-her satisfaction, self-esteem, professionalism, and commitment.

Those little financial rules

CFO and financial office are other pieces of the puzzle. There are plenty of rules that can drive you mad.

The complicated procedures to make an expenses refund request are usually a good indicator, the more complex the more easily you get frustrated.

But there are those little rules that really piss you off:

• Some companies do not allow you to take Mileage gained with flight, since the company pays those miles are of the company…

this would be even correct if the company would demonstrate the same attention to the employee need, but usually, this is just one little drop in a “cut expenses beyond ridiculousness”

• Some companies put rules on your laundry, the craziest? You can claim laundry for everything but underwear (it is real, it is real, I can prove it)…
• Some companies have a certain discretionary ability to move expenses from what is personal expenses to what is business-related according to the mood of the moment.

it is quite a common understanding that you have to advance a certain amount of money, which will be repaid accordingly to the company process. Pity this process usually takes a long time, and the more you have had to advance (bigger expenses claim) the more you have to wait.

Of course the fact you are not traveling for your happiness and pleasure but for the job does not come to the mind of the CFO that is probably sat in the office, and when on the move takes a first-class flight and can claim every expense.

Cars and other allowance

Ok, you give me something for work that is also a benefit. Benefit means it is part of my income. So why sometimes this benefit turns out a mere cost since you can not use it for non-working activities (or the constrain are so hight you simply don’t do it)?

From not allowing your husband-wife to drive, or not covering with insurance in the non-working trips there are a lot of ways to make a benefit non-usable.

Of course, the best way is not to give it to you at all with some good reason, but better not complain, all have to do some sacrifice for the company you should try to understand.

The phone is another wonderful thing that can slightly make you uncomfortable, mostly if you are an international traveler. Policy on phones can vary from company to company. some simply do not care (up to you), others provide sim but not phone (but then require you to install any kind of crap on your personal device, it is called BYOD). A classic is to pretend you do not use the phone for personal reasons (calling family) even if you are on a business trip, at the end you live for work not for your beloved. And of course, roaming is out of the question in most of the case.

Sacrifice and culture

we should all do something for the company.

It hurts me but …

a little sacrifice is mandatory

All nice statements if the company would pay it back with the same coin, but usually, those requirements are mono-directional, from management to you.

Is like when a CEO asks for an important layout and then got a mega bonus, sacrifice hurts mostly if it seems that you and your peers are the only ones who are required to pay a price.

In some culture, the idea of sacrifice is embedded, but here the aim is to leverage the idea the lower hierarchy has to do the extra job (hours, activities) because is the right thing to do.

Does the contract that ties the relationship between employers and employees state what an employee is paid for? Or is it just a useless piece of paper?

If sacrifice can be understandable in exceptional situations, can’t be the rule.

Same with culture. Embracing a new culture is a bidirectional activity, you can’t ask to understand a new culture if you close yourself. There are companies that besides the claiming to be “international” are in reality completely closed to the other work culture. A typical example is the HR manager that does not even speak the local language.

Flexibility

For some strange reason, flexibility is a thing that tends to decrease with the hierarchy. The more you go up the less flexibility is required. So the lower level has to adapt and cope and be flexible.

But curiously when is the employee that asks in exchange a little flexibility this is denied. So is good to ask you to work on Saturday without pay, but don’t dare to ask a day or some hours to go to a funeral (I’ve seen this as well, alas).

Trust

Trust is a bidirectional thing, you can’t trust someone who does not trust you. To some extent it can be understandable that the company takes precautions but it can’t, at the same time, think you have to trust back. If you feel you’re not trusted you will not trust them, as simply as at. I know trusting company decision-makers is hard, but bad managers and HR usually are in the Top Chart.

So Do not ask me if I’m sending CV away, I do not trust you will understand.

… and so on

 

Every one of those aspects, per se, can be managed, but usually, they come all together (or at least most of them), because they are all sign of a bad management attitude in the company. While good managers can mitigate this, in a toxic environment the pain is usually exacerbated by bad managers that add their incompetence to the company environment.

 

 

 

 

Related articles

• Leadership Lessons: Why Micromanagers are FANTASTIC Teachers!
• What’s Going On With Nest’s Toxic Company Culture?
• Why Micromanaging Kills Corporate Culture
• Why Sales Coaching Isn’t the Same as Micromanaging
• What Businesses Can Do to Improve Transparency at All Levels
• Side Effect of mergers and acquisitions: bad managers
• Business Use of Vehicles

The rightful way to make an employee unhappy

Management is a difficult art, management in big corporations is more difficult. Management in a corporation where the multicultural requirement is a need is even harder.

We all know it and, to a certain extent, we have to deal with it. We can’t expect everything works well and right, and we have to show flexibility and we have to be open to change and embrace the new but…

Let’s be real, no matter how much effort you put sometimes things are just not right.

When the environment is too toxic probably is better to leave than hoping for a change. 

There are plenty of ways a toxic company environment can make your life miserable, and usually, they try to use them all.

Sometimes the toxic environment is so strong that even the best manager has to comply with disgraceful attitudes (or leave).

But what is the sign of a toxic environment? the first sign is you do not stand it anymore. Sometimes is not a single event, but a set of rules that combined together with a bad management attitude make the mix toxic.

Let’s do some examples of rules and managers that can turn your working life into a nightmare. 

 

Micromanagement

This is a common nightmare. The manager want to check every single detail. Not in a helpful proactive way, but in a compulsory need to not give delegation or autonomy to the people.

Usually, micromanagement comes with an exaggerated manager ego (I am not right because I’m right, I am right because I am the Boss) and a fundamental mistrust of the other people.

Quite a sociopathic attitude? Not really is more common than we should expect. It happens that people promoted to a management position changes their attitude and adhere to this model.

Usually, the micromanager is also extremely rude and impolite, the kind of guy that calls you at 10 pm shouting if you do not answer immediately. You do not have the right to your personal life, your life should be built around your manager.

And, of course, the micromanager value your time in a different way, so no matter if you reach your goal, the important thing for the micromanager are:

• do it his-her way
• time, the more you stay at office the better (so it can control more?)

The point is if you are looking for a life balance, with this kind of manager the only way is to rule out your brain from your work, and just act like a robot. But I can assure you he-she will shout anyway

Yes Man

Do you know those managers that follow blindly company rules? Even the most stupid one? Have you ever worked in that environment?

This situation usually comes together with denial. Evidence does not touch the manager that will always find a good reason to justify company strategy. When they talk it seems that everyone (except you) is working in a fairyland where everyone helps, communication is perfect, the company treats employees like sons or daughters, and all are working for the greater good.

Of course, you that object that the reality is different are the point of failure of this model. If problems arise they have to be hidden or the blame has to be given to someone in a lower hierarchical status.

No roads no direction

Another typical thing that makes people unhappy is not to see directions, again a trait of many managers. Every change is allowed and you can’t see a strategy or purpose. Hard to be committed when you can’t see a good reason to do it. But every change has a reason, and if you do not cope is you that are resistant to change. So again you’re the problem. 

KPI or how to make clear you will never reach them

KPI (Key Performance Index) is another great instrument of torture if used well (and they know how to use it). Basically the idea is to put them at a non-reachable level, but in a way the fault is your one.

KPI is not necessarily a just a sales target which, by definition, is unreachable, but a complex set of manure used to drive you mad. The more your job is based on intellectual stuff the better will be your KPI used as a metric from someone that probably has no idea what your work actually is. But in the end, we are all replaceable, and so your work is not so important.

KPI is a fine agreement between two evil entities, your management hierarchy, and HR department. HR apparently usually put a lot of effort in designing non-understandable systems that seemed to used to target the employee to lower his-her satisfaction, self-esteem, professionalism, and commitment.

Those little financial rules

CFO and financial office are other pieces of the puzzle. There are plenty of rules that can drive you mad.

The complicated procedures to make an expenses refund request are usually a good indicator, the more complex the more easily you get frustrated.

But there are those little rules that really piss you off:

• Some companies do not allow you to take Mileage gained with flight, since the company pays those miles are of the company…

this would be even correct if the company would demonstrate the same attention to the employee need, but usually, this is just one little drop in a “cut expenses beyond ridiculousness”

• Some companies put rules on your laundry, the craziest? You can claim laundry for everything but underwear (it is real, it is real, I can prove it)…
• Some companies have a certain discretionary ability to move expenses from what is personal expenses to what is business-related according to the mood of the moment.

it is quite a common understanding that you have to advance a certain amount of money, which will be repaid accordingly to the company process. Pity this process usually takes a long time, and the more you have had to advance (bigger expenses claim) the more you have to wait.

Of course the fact you are not traveling for your happiness and pleasure but for the job does not come to the mind of the CFO that is probably sat in the office, and when on the move takes a first-class flight and can claim every expense.

Cars and other allowance

Ok, you give me something for work that is also a benefit. Benefit means it is part of my income. So why sometimes this benefit turns out a mere cost since you can not use it for non-working activities (or the constrain are so hight you simply don’t do it)?

From not allowing your husband-wife to drive, or not covering with insurance in the non-working trips there are a lot of ways to make a benefit non-usable.

Of course, the best way is not to give it to you at all with some good reason, but better not complain, all have to do some sacrifice for the company you should try to understand.

The phone is another wonderful thing that can slightly make you uncomfortable, mostly if you are an international traveler. Policy on phones can vary from company to company. some simply do not care (up to you), others provide sim but not phone (but then require you to install any kind of crap on your personal device, it is called BYOD). A classic is to pretend you do not use the phone for personal reasons (calling family) even if you are on a business trip, at the end you live for work not for your beloved. And of course, roaming is out of the question in most of the case.

Sacrifice and culture

we should all do something for the company.

It hurts me but …

a little sacrifice is mandatory

All nice statements if the company would pay it back with the same coin, but usually, those requirements are mono-directional, from management to you.

Is like when a CEO asks for an important layout and then got a mega bonus, sacrifice hurts mostly if it seems that you and your peers are the only ones who are required to pay a price.

In some culture, the idea of sacrifice is embedded, but here the aim is to leverage the idea the lower hierarchy has to do the extra job (hours, activities) because is the right thing to do.

Does the contract that ties the relationship between employers and employees state what an employee is paid for? Or is it just a useless piece of paper?

If sacrifice can be understandable in exceptional situations, can’t be the rule.

Same with culture. Embracing a new culture is a bidirectional activity, you can’t ask to understand a new culture if you close yourself. There are companies that besides the claiming to be “international” are in reality completely closed to the other work culture. A typical example is the HR manager that does not even speak the local language.

Flexibility

For some strange reason, flexibility is a thing that tends to decrease with the hierarchy. The more you go up the less flexibility is required. So the lower level has to adapt and cope and be flexible.

But curiously when is the employee that asks in exchange a little flexibility this is denied. So is good to ask you to work on Saturday without pay, but don’t dare to ask a day or some hours to go to a funeral (I’ve seen this as well, alas).

Trust

Trust is a bidirectional thing, you can’t trust someone who does not trust you. To some extent it can be understandable that the company takes precautions but it can’t, at the same time, think you have to trust back. If you feel you’re not trusted you will not trust them, as simply as at. I know trusting company decision-makers is hard, but bad managers and HR usually are in the Top Chart.

So Do not ask me if I’m sending CV away, I do not trust you will understand.

… and so on

 

Every one of those aspects, per se, can be managed, but usually, they come all together (or at least most of them), because they are all sign of a bad management attitude in the company. While good managers can mitigate this, in a toxic environment the pain is usually exacerbated by bad managers that add their incompetence to the company environment.

 

 

 

 

Related articles

• Leadership Lessons: Why Micromanagers are FANTASTIC Teachers!
• What’s Going On With Nest’s Toxic Company Culture?
• Why Micromanaging Kills Corporate Culture
• Why Sales Coaching Isn’t the Same as Micromanaging
• What Businesses Can Do to Improve Transparency at All Levels
• Side Effect of mergers and acquisitions: bad managers
• Business Use of Vehicles

The IoT Files: Culture

 

In the previous IoT flies tried to outline what are, from my point of view, some key factor that have to be taken into account when talking about IoT.

The last, but not the least, point I would like to put some notes is culture.

Since IoT is something that will shape out way of life on many aspect, we have to convene that culture is a key element in order to positively and safely embrace it.

Culture refers to billions of things, from language structure to literature, from how we share information to how we get them. In any of those aspects IoT will have a great impact and relevance.

IoT awareness.

From a cultural point of view embracing IoT means, first of all, the awareness of IoT is and its implication.

This awareness and understanding will be shaped while IoT will growth and become part of our life, but if we start to talk about cultural impact of something when it is already there, it is too late.

If we weight our experience nowadays we still do not have coped, from a cultural point of view, with all the technological advantage. Sometimes we simply refuse to accept them and label as bad, ot we use it without a real comprehension.

The result is under everyone’s eye, from the rise of cybercrime to the rise of internet dependencies and the apparent shrink of interpersonal relationships literature is full of example on how we still badly cope with the new technology.

Laws also are affected by this difficult to comprehend the new environment, as management culture as well.

IoT awareness is therefore way more important since is way more pervasive than our actual technology.

A new privacy

IoT will be so pervasive that will change dramatically our perception of privacy. as a matter of fact in the IoT world there is nothing like privacy at all, somehow there is always a sensor monitoring you, and this could drive to unexpected behavior reactions. But for sure a new approach to privacy will be necessary, as well as a new approach to privacy protection. In a world where all is turned on data, those data becomes the paradigm of our reality and so we will have to deal with that accordingly.

Communication Issues

But the changes are also related to the way we will communicate. New jargon comes out every moment, millennial have different language from generations X or baby boomers, and so IoT will developed its own language. How we will incorporate it and drive it is still to be defined, but in IoT the wide level of communication and data interchange will move all this to a worldwide scale. Language will not become a local issue anymore just because to exchange data it is needed a common communication framework. As for privacy without a common understanding of the rules will soon be turn this into a chaos.

Censorship and cultural constrain

One of the main issues IoT will bring with it is how to deal with communication restrictions, or in other words censorship. We have already mentioned censorship as one of the big issues that can affect IoT, to stress more the idea it will be not only a business problem but also a cultural problem. A world of sensor that are monitoring everything (this is the downside of IoT) can affect heavily systems believes and force some culture to close up into themselves. If we will not understand how to cope with it all relationships could be bring to the extreme.

We see it nowadays with the rise of Hate speeches, bullies, urban legends, fake stories on social media how difficult is to cope with more open communication channels, can you imagine what IoT will bring back? We have to assume that the number of data will be way more, and so the way people will interact with those data.

Who is left behind?

And the cultural issues will affect more the technology illiterate, and the ones will be left behind, marking a wider distance between the IoT world citizens and the one left behind. The digital divide is already a cultural problem, IoT will widen it up. Without the proper tools to understand this world the level of non comprehension will rise up dramatically, widen tensions.

And this is not just a problem from rich and poor countries, even inside rich countries the difference and the level of familiarity with technology vary dramatically in social groups or areas.

Illiteracy today is not just referred to not be able to write or do math, but also use internet and technology as computer or Smartphone. Just wide it up the gap with the introduction of new technologies….

How to teach all this

The root of the problem will become: how to teach all this?

Today a scholar system does not approach, generally speaking, the actual technology environment. Schools is, roughly, a century behind the modern world. Access to technology, how to deal with technology, is not common in most of the worldwide scholar system. Is not just a problem of technology in place (give a computer to every student) but also how to teach with the new tools and what to teach?

Cyber security basics, as an example, should be a mandatory introduction in any school of any grade, considering the age our children approach the technology without the proper mindset. But schools are slow to cope with the new world.

But also at corporate level illiteracy about cyber security, technology use, implication between technology and communication are the common reality, and this lack of knowledge spread at every level from the lowest to the highest. a very few exception here can be done.

This issue should cover all the aspect of educations, from first grade to university, to corporate training. We can not afford anymore children that does not know how to protect themselves from the cyber world, of university graduate that face the real world as completely illiterate of what they will find in the real corporate environment, of developers that has not the slightest idea what means privacy and security, of management that is not able to evaluate the impact of technology in their business and so on.

Not to be able to deal with this will means to be overwhelmed by the impact of those technology and, in last analysis, to be ruled out as dinosaurs.

TBD

And the list could go on and on. We can make prediction but we can’t see clearly the future (unless using a crystal ball). We need to have new cultural, linguistic, philosophical tools to help us to cope with the new reality.

What to do?

We should start it now, not waiting for some higher action. Share knowledge, awareness, talk and think about those issues is the first step to find a solution and address them.

This is also a call to be active in associations, think thank group or whatever you can to help rising awareness. and where you feel gaps in your own knowledge you can try to discuss them asking from support.

good thinking

Antonio

 

Related articles

• Smart Cities – The Cyber Security and Privacy Implications of Ubiquitous Urban Computing
• Threats on government networks remain undetected for 16 days
• Cyber attacks aren’t just targeting big business
• Learn Cyber Safety During Data Privacy Month
• Vaizey launches cyber security learning tool for HR professionals
• Britain and Israel will work together to combat cyber security attacks
• Skype’s pilot with Aadhaar to authenticate identity online

The IoT Files: Culture

 

In the previous IoT flies tried to outline what are, from my point of view, some key factor that have to be taken into account when talking about IoT.

The last, but not the least, point I would like to put some notes is culture.

Since IoT is something that will shape out way of life on many aspect, we have to convene that culture is a key element in order to positively and safely embrace it.

Culture refers to billions of things, from language structure to literature, from how we share information to how we get them. In any of those aspects IoT will have a great impact and relevance.

IoT awareness.

From a cultural point of view embracing IoT means, first of all, the awareness of IoT is and its implication.

This awareness and understanding will be shaped while IoT will growth and become part of our life, but if we start to talk about cultural impact of something when it is already there, it is too late.

If we weight our experience nowadays we still do not have coped, from a cultural point of view, with all the technological advantage. Sometimes we simply refuse to accept them and label as bad, ot we use it without a real comprehension.

The result is under everyone’s eye, from the rise of cybercrime to the rise of internet dependencies and the apparent shrink of interpersonal relationships literature is full of example on how we still badly cope with the new technology.

Laws also are affected by this difficult to comprehend the new environment, as management culture as well.

IoT awareness is therefore way more important since is way more pervasive than our actual technology.

A new privacy

IoT will be so pervasive that will change dramatically our perception of privacy. as a matter of fact in the IoT world there is nothing like privacy at all, somehow there is always a sensor monitoring you, and this could drive to unexpected behavior reactions. But for sure a new approach to privacy will be necessary, as well as a new approach to privacy protection. In a world where all is turned on data, those data becomes the paradigm of our reality and so we will have to deal with that accordingly.

Communication Issues

But the changes are also related to the way we will communicate. New jargon comes out every moment, millennial have different language from generations X or baby boomers, and so IoT will developed its own language. How we will incorporate it and drive it is still to be defined, but in IoT the wide level of communication and data interchange will move all this to a worldwide scale. Language will not become a local issue anymore just because to exchange data it is needed a common communication framework. As for privacy without a common understanding of the rules will soon be turn this into a chaos.

Censorship and cultural constrain

One of the main issues IoT will bring with it is how to deal with communication restrictions, or in other words censorship. We have already mentioned censorship as one of the big issues that can affect IoT, to stress more the idea it will be not only a business problem but also a cultural problem. A world of sensor that are monitoring everything (this is the downside of IoT) can affect heavily systems believes and force some culture to close up into themselves. If we will not understand how to cope with it all relationships could be bring to the extreme.

We see it nowadays with the rise of Hate speeches, bullies, urban legends, fake stories on social media how difficult is to cope with more open communication channels, can you imagine what IoT will bring back? We have to assume that the number of data will be way more, and so the way people will interact with those data.

Who is left behind?

And the cultural issues will affect more the technology illiterate, and the ones will be left behind, marking a wider distance between the IoT world citizens and the one left behind. The digital divide is already a cultural problem, IoT will widen it up. Without the proper tools to understand this world the level of non comprehension will rise up dramatically, widen tensions.

And this is not just a problem from rich and poor countries, even inside rich countries the difference and the level of familiarity with technology vary dramatically in social groups or areas.

Illiteracy today is not just referred to not be able to write or do math, but also use internet and technology as computer or Smartphone. Just wide it up the gap with the introduction of new technologies….

How to teach all this

The root of the problem will become: how to teach all this?

Today a scholar system does not approach, generally speaking, the actual technology environment. Schools is, roughly, a century behind the modern world. Access to technology, how to deal with technology, is not common in most of the worldwide scholar system. Is not just a problem of technology in place (give a computer to every student) but also how to teach with the new tools and what to teach?

Cyber security basics, as an example, should be a mandatory introduction in any school of any grade, considering the age our children approach the technology without the proper mindset. But schools are slow to cope with the new world.

But also at corporate level illiteracy about cyber security, technology use, implication between technology and communication are the common reality, and this lack of knowledge spread at every level from the lowest to the highest. a very few exception here can be done.

This issue should cover all the aspect of educations, from first grade to university, to corporate training. We can not afford anymore children that does not know how to protect themselves from the cyber world, of university graduate that face the real world as completely illiterate of what they will find in the real corporate environment, of developers that has not the slightest idea what means privacy and security, of management that is not able to evaluate the impact of technology in their business and so on.

Not to be able to deal with this will means to be overwhelmed by the impact of those technology and, in last analysis, to be ruled out as dinosaurs.

TBD

And the list could go on and on. We can make prediction but we can’t see clearly the future (unless using a crystal ball). We need to have new cultural, linguistic, philosophical tools to help us to cope with the new reality.

What to do?

We should start it now, not waiting for some higher action. Share knowledge, awareness, talk and think about those issues is the first step to find a solution and address them.

This is also a call to be active in associations, think thank group or whatever you can to help rising awareness. and where you feel gaps in your own knowledge you can try to discuss them asking from support.

good thinking

Antonio

 

Related articles

• Smart Cities – The Cyber Security and Privacy Implications of Ubiquitous Urban Computing
• Threats on government networks remain undetected for 16 days
• Cyber attacks aren’t just targeting big business
• Learn Cyber Safety During Data Privacy Month
• Vaizey launches cyber security learning tool for HR professionals
• Britain and Israel will work together to combat cyber security attacks
• Skype’s pilot with Aadhaar to authenticate identity online

The fine art to make impossible what is possible. (Or why many projects fail)

I know there is always a great distance between reality and management, Sometimes it happens to me to bump into a real good manager, but it is mostly an exception to the general rule than the norm.

I would say that my personal opinion is that because nowadays management mostly is all but dealing with reality, with the prevalent culture that has moved from production to finance, we moved from the real economy to a virtual representation that does not take into account many factors because focused only on few parameters. The result is quite interesting since, from one side, finance makes wide use of mathematics and “science” to determine the erratic behavior of users consumers, and at the same time, in terms of management, tend to consider the users (employees, consumers, partners, human beings in general) statistic anomalies to get rid of somehow.

But somehow, we have to face it every day, and therefore I am still wondering how to survive this dichotomy.

I don’t want to say this is a personal problem related to one specific person’s bad behavior; it is more a cultural corporate issue, the distance between what “it is” and what we think “is every day greater.

I experienced myself how even in front of a reality check, there is little chance to change manager’s vision of reality (they sometimes live in a sort of Diminished Reality?); like shreds of evidence slip out of sight in front of very solid, and mandatory (opportunistic? cultural?) corporate internal beliefs.

Alas, this distorted vision of what is actually the environment is at the basis of many company activities: from setting user personal goals to transformational projects or even business projections.

This shortens sight can spread across many different goals; that is set up to be reasonable in the designer’s mind and absolutely foolish in the hands of the ones called to accomplish them.

And when the reality check comes to show this is not possible (usually at the end of the goal, besides any claim done during the path), the classical answer from the goal designer (i.e., the enlighten manager) is generally that:

• it would be best if you tried harder (you can’t pretend everything is set up for you, some personal, yours, sacrifice are inevitable)
• it would be best if you pushed more (to justify when they do not care about you until it is too late),
• is up to you to find a solution (a variant of the genial statement: I want solutions, not problems)
• it would be best if you had told us before (a variant of the push more, where it is not even recognized you told it)
• …

Of course, nothing as reminding that

• if there are no resources in place the things can’t be done,
• if there are not figure to push (or systematically denied access to those resources) is not possible to push,
• if the proposed solutions are rejected as not viable because it would state a lack of resources that is not acceptable,

could make you gain the terms of eternal compliant guy (nemo propheta in patria).

“If all complain like you do and do nothing, at this time the company where will be?”

Well, I would object that sometimes what you call complain is just the description of the resources needed to perform what has been required, but this is obviously not the vision of most of the managers who have their own interpretation of resources and how to use them.

“There are problems, but is up to you to overcome that, a little sacrifice have to be done”

Well, let me say something unpleasant, some tasks cannot be done even if you put them in the PBC, KPI, Business Plan, or whatever, and most of the time, the reason is the company itself.

How can I say this? well, I can summon just more than 30 years of experience in the IT world, to name an example, lol 🙂

But there are solid facts behind all this, and those facts are why they fail to accomplish tasks or go down to a project.

So let me try to remind myself how a task can be fulfilled with some basic project management knowledge that (hopefully) even high-level managers (take the irony here) should have.

A task (o goal) is something that should bring us from the status “A” to the status “B”

This path can be performed through actions that transform things from “A” to “B”.

It does not actually matter if we are talking about how to make one billion dollars from scratch or to fulfill a KPI task; things go more or less always the same here,

Those actions are usually what you put in a Gantt chart,

The chart aims to design a temporal line with owners and resources and the relationships (at least from a temporal point of view) between all that.

The Gantt is a great tool (although not the only one) to understand if what you are thinking makes sense. As a tool, it should be useful for those who deal with “normal” projects and the guy designing the company strategy to raise incomes or market penetration. This is a transformation and, therefore, can be resolved in a project that shapes the process.

Here comes the pain

To do this path, we should know the initial status “A”, the final status “B”, the resources, time, and steps involved in the process to the best of our knowledge.

Now the first problems come from the definition of the initial status “A”.

If you do not have a clear understanding (or are in open denial, as I saw so many times) of the initial status, every effort could be vain because it will be reflected on the possibility of performing the steps required. A fail to design the status “A” will Impact the complete process making it harder, if not possible, to reach the required status “B”.

The problem in designing the situation “A” is intrinsically related to how much information you can gather, your experience, and the nature itself of “A”. This information gathering requires to be able to design a real environment, and not the virtual one usually presented.

Who is in charge of what, how to reach him-her-it, what is the level of commitment, what is the relationships between stakeholders, what are the political constraints are just a few of the thousands of questions that should be clarified, political issues are way more important if the task involves a process from “A” to “B” inside a company crossing different units.

Alas, the level of information officially provided is, usually, the least valid since what is presented seldom is what you actually have in place, but it is a composition of the managers and stakeholders’ vision, what they believe is the truth, what it is their interest at that moment.

Let’s take, as an example, who is in charge of something.

Who is in charge?

It seems easy, but this is one of the most difficult questions inside a company. There are real and virtual owners of a task. Most of the time, who have to deal with the task itself is not the owner but work on instructions given by someone who, possibly, is the owner.

Now the problem to understand who is in charge of something is dealing with a subtle political issue: power. Identify the owner can sometimes drive a “political” problem regarding the balance of powers inside the company. As a result, this information is blurry and not easy to obtain.

The underline alternative is to look for a friendly answer from someone who knows; this not means reaching the owner but at least having some info; the problem is how much that info adheres to reality.

Commitment

It is even more difficult to evaluate its commitment if it is difficult to find an owner for a task. To ask someone to commit to a project require being able to be influential.

This is not always possible for several reasons: hierarchy, different groups, political issues….

We can either ask for collaboration or order for collaboration, but we are not sure we will have the collaboration needed in both cases. Commitment comes from understanding the need, but when it is not possible to reach out to the stakeholders, it is clear this commitment is hard to obtain.

In specific corporate environments, it can even be a problem the communication channel; an informal communication channel sometimes has to be overlapped to the formal one. The kind of info that can be passed through those channels is not always the same.

To be clear, has it ever happened to you that to a formal request, you received two answers: one official that states “ X” and a second, “by talking as a friend”, that informs you that the actual situation is “Y”?

All that makes it really hard to draw a clear design of situation “A” for at least two reasons:

• You do not have a clear vision of the situation of “A” because the information gathering constrains
• You can not report the actual status of “A” because it would not be accepted since it is different from the virtual status presented.

So at the moment, my task is starting to become interesting, I can’t have an exact design of the status of “A”.

Well, let’s go to the second step, defining the status “B”

Understanding the status of  “B” is somehow tied to the same constraints related to the status of  “A”. Moreover, its definition is often blurry because any transformation, per se, is highly slowed by the company infrastructure for thousands of reasons.

Usually, “B” comes out from a bad compromise between what should be actually done and what it is allowed to do without hurting any political stakeholder inside the company (be it the CEO, CFO, President, BU leader, or whatever).

Again, defining “B” becomes hard because of the same difficult reason that makes it hard to define “A” plus the future uncertainty.

So this is the reason why, to make an example, budgets for the new years are designed to fulfill requests from stakeholders (investors, managers, or whatever) and seldom based on the real market status. This is not a problem when the economy is in expansion, but when we are in a time of crisis….. but how many times I’ve heard:

we have to do at least x% increase this year no matter what

Of course, with the same resources and process in place.

In literature, usually, all those aspects are not present, and a quite naïve way of a deal with this is to say that the company and its managers are focused on the superior wellness of the company itself, acting in a semi-perfect way.

Alas, this is just theoretical, the truth is always different, and different leverages move all company players due to different cultural, historical, material interests.

But turn back to my problem.

I have to move from A to B, and I have no clear vision of the starting “A” point and the arriving “B” point.

Now comes the interesting part: to design the process, I would need to determine the resource in need.

Dealing with resources is not always so easy. The resources can be present or not be present, and even if present, the resources should be available, which is another aspect.

Dealing with resources will affect the time and the cost of the operation. As a matter of fact, any project depends on 3 main dimensions once determined the goals: time, resources, and costs.

Those 3 dimensions that determine the project are not unrelated but are connected to another and tied to the transformation we have to do.

Those links are usually depicted in a triangle that ties together, where each triangle’s area gives the indication of “quantity” each dimension requires.

Now since we haven’t been able to exactly define the goals (due to the indeterminate status of “A” and “B”) we are facing a serious problem to define the relevant dimensions.

Resources to be used in a project should be available for a certain amount (quantity and time). Some fully dedicated, some partially. If those resources come from an external group, the utilization is subject to negotiations between the project’s sponsors and the resources’ owners in a clear, measurable manner.

But due to the blurry environment previously depicted, this is not always the case. The result is that some resources are only “virtually” assigned, and we should rely on their goodwill or the all to be confirmed theory that “all work for the greater good…”

Costs bring us a new level of uncertainty since they are related to a multitude of facts: there are costs tied to a specific task, other that can be related to the necessity to use external resources, sometimes those costs are hidden and not of easy evaluation (as for the determination of the status of point “A” and “B” and the available resources).

Clearly, the interdependence between the various dimensions shows us that modifying one dimension impact the other two. Still, some levels can’t be freely modified because they depend, as an example, on specific needs that are external to the control of the project; this could involve anything, resources, timelines, and costs.

As an example, typically, the real resources available are less than the virtual offered, so the real situation evolves in:

This means an increase in time and costs.

For the previously mentioned reasons that make all blurry, this situation requires accepting higher costs or a longer time-frame. Usually, this is denied because it would be like admitting there have been some problems in the information-gathering phase.

And of course, stakeholders, sponsors, and real external constrain can say this is not feasible.

So the result is even with fewer resources and a timeline that can’t be changed.

Alas, lowering the timeline would increase the costs, but here comes a manager trick….

It’s a kind of magic

The situation described would indicate a dramatic increase in costs. Still, the blurry situation we depicted before makes it possible to consider some of those costs as “virtual” demanding them to other instances or not controllable items.

As in the use of marketing funds to cover some activities and so on, of course, without approval or consensus of Marketing and in front of historical examples that tell this is not a viable solution, funds can be virtually reallocated to cover “temporary” resource issues.

Basically, the result is a situation that depicts a “hole” in the costs area to cover the situation’s reality.

In this case, the best solution would be to cancel the project or redefines the goals, but this is not a politically acceptable viable solution (the blame would be on the higher level), so the result is to design a project with not enough resources, commitment, and economic coverage.

We can design analogous situations on Internal resources and costs, where Virtual entities are usually well-known guests.

Doomed to fail

Of course, this will fail, but this is not the point; the failure is on the task owner, while the manager typically will blame him for not having worked enough.

From a political point of view, there is a great difference between not starting a project or making it fail on the way. In the first case, the responsibility is tied to the stakeholders and sponsors; in the second, the blame will be given to the project team who could not perform. So it is understandable why the second solution is the preferred one.

The nice part is that even knowing all this often, it is not possible nor to object nor to decline to work, lead, take in charge of the task or project, and sometimes this will be used as

“you accepted it, and told was possible to do”

In this case better to comply, smile, nod, and politely ask sorry, LoL

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