Sure, they’re real Marines, but their cover is all wrong.
What do you mean?
Your cover is supposed to be level with the deck. That guy in the middle and the the guy on the left are tipped too far back. The guy on the right is the only one wearing it correctly.
Hats. My friend William was talking about how Marines wear their hats.
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(Photo credit: USS Holland)
In one of our training rooms we have a mural that covers an entire wall. It shows a bunch of Marines in their dress blues standing in formation. Several of the Marines have their hats tipped too far back.
It’s a funny thing to notice, don’t you think? I mean, what difference does it matter how you wear your hat? Or if you even wear a hat. Did you know it is against the Military dress code for a soldier to be indoors with his hat on? Or outside without it on?
They military pays attention to those things. And they consider them very, very important. While the closest I ever got to the military was a semester with the ROTC, and a daughter who is an Army Reservist. But, I think there’s a reason for such strict adherence to a dress code.
Steve hated ties. Or maybe he just hated being told he had to wear one. Like some throwback to IBM of the 1950’s my company required all employees to wear white shirts and ties. Steve not only didn’t want to wear one, he wouldn’t.
The problem was Steve was a good engineer. So, what do you do? Do you make a big deal about something as simple as a tie? Do you write him up? If his manager made a big deal about it, Steve would simply tie a tie around his neck with a square knot and announce he was now compliant with the dress code.
I wasn’t Steve’s manager. So, I didn’t have to decide how to deal with him. His manager decided keeping a good employee was more important than a minor dress code violation.
Had I been Steve’s manager, there would have been no question. I would have fired him. Oh, I would have tried to coach him. But, if he refused to modify his behavior? He’s going to go, for two main reasons.
First, it’s a terrible example for other employees.
Why do we have to wear ties if Steve doesn’t?
People didn’t like the ties. Personally, I didn’t care. I’ve talked about Your Company Has a Uniform Even If It Doesn’t Have A Dress Code. I knew when I took the job that it came with a dress code, so did Steve. And, I’m not sure how I could have asked my other employees to make sacrifices like working long hours, or working extra on a project, or taking a trip over a holiday week, if I allowed Steve to skip on a tie.
The second reason I would have let Steve go is more important, and I think it is the same reason the military makes such a big deal about hats.
Most jobs require a level of attention to detail. Engineers who do sloppy work make unforced errors. Come on, Rodney, really? Not wearing a tie makes you a bad engineer? Not really. But, if you are not willing to follow the really simply dress guidelines, I’m not sure I can trust you to follow the required steps in a complex runbook.
If you think the dress rules don’t apply to you, how do I know you won’t cut corners because “protocols don’t apply to you?” If I can’t trust you to follow a rule where breaking it is very obvious, how do I know you’ll follow the rules when no one is watching?
How does this apply to the military and hats? I don’t think they really care about the rain. In fact, Marines refuse to carry an umbrella. (Seriously, carrying an umbrella is a violation of the dress code.) So, if they don’t really care about the purpose of a hat, why do they care about a hat? Because showing you will follow the little rules reassures people that you will follow the big ones.
So, it might seem extreme to fire a guy over refusing to wear a tie. But, think of it this way, would you fire an engineer that you couldn’t trust? So would I.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife and thirteen children and one grandchild.
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Please give your attention to the flight attendants as they demonstrate the safety features of our Boeing 737 aircraft.
Yesterday i flew to Richmond, VA on business. If you’ve flown more than a couple of times, the safety lecture is the LAST thing to which you are going to pay attention. We all know our seat can act as a flotation device and it’s not called an unexpected water landing, it’s called crashing into the ocean. And really, how many times can you hear “insert the metal tip into the buckle”?
And who needs that anyway? What functioning adult doesn’t know how a seatbelt works?
I met him.
It was several years ago and I was flying from Seattle to Europe to speak at a conference. I had the aisle and he had the window in business class. He looked about 20 years old. As we settled in for what would be a long flight we did the normal settling in, nod and then get started on a book. Well, I did anyway. My seat mate didn’t have a book and he fumbled with the seat belt. Not the normal “am I sitting on half the seatbelt?” fumbling. He had both parts in his hands and he couldn’t get them attached.
You might think there is only one possible way to even attempt to attach a seatbelt. You’d be wrong. My young friend was attempting to insert the metal tip into the back of the buckle. As you might imagine, it didn’t fit.
I think you need to turn that part around.
Like this?
Yeah, now you’ve got it.
Thanks.
No problem. So, what are you headed to Europe for?
I just graduated from high school. I decided to hitchhike through Europe for the next few month until college starts.
I was surprised. He was going to die! Did his parents not love him? Who sends a kid to Europe to wander around for several months unsupervised? I mean, he didn’t even know how to buckle a seatbelt, who knew what trouble he’d run into trying to navigate foreign currencies, trains and finding a bathroom.
Do you speak any foreign languages?
Nope. Just English.
I said a small prayer for God to watch over the young and naive. I’m not Catholic, but I’m sure there’s a patron saint of fools and innocents.
A funny thing happened. . .nothing.
I never saw or heard from the young man again, and that’s my point. There wasn’t a case of an American teenager kidnapped in Berlin, or killed in Brussels. Sure, he might have had some harrowing circumstances, but I’m guessing he came out of it with an entire travelogue full of experiences.
It made me think about risk. How often do we miss out on a great new experience for lack of trying? As a (at the time) 40 year old man, did I have the courage to simply go and assume it would all work out?
Probably not. Does that mean I’m not brave enough? I don’t think so.
There an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation called Tapestry in which Captain Picard has a chance to go back in time and “correct” mistakes he made during his academy days. He exercises better judgement and avoids some of the missteps of youth.
But, when he’s brought back to his “normal” time he discovers he is no longer captain of the Enterprise. Instead he’s a low level clerk who’s greatest distinction is that he’s punctual. Picard describes his “corrected” life as bereft of passion.
It was the wild days of youth that made him who he was as a adult. He gladly regains his misspent youth even at a risk to his life.
Courage is a funny thing. As a mature adult it might mean changing careers. It might mean going back to finish a college degree. Maybe it’s betting everything on a start up. These are the brave acts of a person of experience. But, they are brave, none-the -less. For a young person, bravery might be asking a woman to marry him. Maybe it’s the decision to pursue a career in medicine. Or, maybe it’s back backing through Europe for three months, even if you can’t insert the metal tip into the buckle.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife and thirteen children and one grandchild.
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I appreciate all the work you guys put in preparing for this maintenance window. Management was very happy with the results
So, what did you tell them, Rodney?
Same as always. I told them I did all the work and you guys were a bunch of Screw Ups.
. . .
Rodney, you’ve made huge strides with the monthly maintenance work. It’s really made a difference having you dedicated to the project.
Thanks. But actually the team has done a phenomenal job. They’ve really done a tremendous amount of work. I just point them in the right direction. They really are the ones that made it happen.
The first conversation happened with my team, the second with my supervisors. Both groups knew that my version of events wasn’t entirely accurate. Sure, I did a lot of work to prepare for the maintenance windows. But, I had no direct control over the engineers. The only way I could get them to do a stellar job for me, was to convince them that I had talked them up to management so much that they were going to have a hard time living up to expectations.
The team understood that I wasn’t going to take credit. They laughed when I claimed I was going to take all the glory for me. It was out of character enough that there wasn’t any question.
But why? Why even have this rule? Why not just give credit where it’s due and take credit when you have honestly earned it?
Loyalty
Several weeks ago I wrote that Company Loyalty Only Ever Goes One Way. And I still believe that. But, personal loyalty goes both way. As a Project Manager I have no direct control over anyone. But, I need things from everyone. Sure, at some corporate level they have to help me, but as I explained in Playing Corporate Basketball, you can get a lot more accomplished and get things done quicker if there’s a certain element of personal loyalty.
And loyalty is a funny thing. You first have to give it in order to get it. My virtual team has to understand that I have their best interests at heart. They have to believe that I’m going to go into the senior management briefings and not take their credit. Once they are convinced of my good intentions, they will start to live up to them. They will want me to look good because I will make them look good.
In turn I want the engineers to look good because it will ultimately make me look good. And the more I give away credit to the team while talking to senior management the stronger leader I appear to be.
I believe that everyone is motivated by self interest. The irony of business, and really any relationship is that the more you promote your team, the better it makes you look.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife and thirteen children and one grandchild.
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Since I started my own business, I have to work half days.
Sounds rough. LOL
And the beauty of it is that I get to pick which 12 hours I’m going to work.
Many of my readers know that I started a new job recently. I work as a dedicated IT project manager for a large telecommunication company. I’m dedicated to strictly working on a single account. It doesn’t hurt that it will soon be our biggest account.
We are a call center, which means that we hire agents to take phone calls. It’s a tough gig. I started my career at WordPerfect doing phone support. (Back Where It All Began.) I want to talk a little about hourly vs salary.
Our agents are all hourly. I’m salary.
Hourly has some advantages. Typically, when you have taken your last call of the day, you hang up your headset and you.are.done. No “homework.”
Also, we handle hundreds of calls per day. That can sometimes be tough to schedule for. Sometimes the queue gets slammed and it’s all hands on deck. But, other times the calls are slow, and the schedulers ask for VTO: Voluntary Time Off. Like when the airlines ask for volunteers on an overbooked flight, the schedulers ask if anyone wants to take the rest of the day off? Of course, they are doing it without pay, but it can still be a perk. Oh, and if the queue is slammed and they ask you to stay past your normal shift: OVERTIME! (I haven’t gotten overtime in 25 years.)
Hourly also has it’s rotten parts of course. As I said earlier, if you don’t work, you don’t get paid. There’s typically no paid sick leave or paid vacation. And, at least for our agents, you have a schedule. You need to clock in and clock out for everything. And we have people who’s job it is to watch the stats and remind people that breaks are 15 minutes only.
Salaried workers avoid many of those issues. So long as my boss is good with it, I can come and go as I need to. Need to leave early for a doctor’s appointment, or a kid’s soccer game? Make sure you’re doing your job and no one bats an eye. Vacation and sick time is included in your deal, typically. And in a weird quirk of scheduling, if you come to work and then have to leave for some reason after a couple of hours, you get paid for the entire day.
Nice.
But there’s a downside too, right? That’s my point today. Typically a salaried employee is expected to know how to do their job and get it done without a lot of management oversight. My manager has very little interaction in my daily tasks. He makes it a point to stop by and find out what I’m working on. As the new guy, he wants to make sure I don’t get overwhelmed, or stuck on something.
It’s a great job. But, I’m coming in and replacing the work of two other PMs. And Matt and Clint have loads of company experience. I’m trying like mad to come up to speed on my new company, and the client, and take over tasks from my coworkers so they can go focus on other projects, and deal with IT incidents on the call floor. It tends to make for long days.
And as a Project Manager you would think I would manage time better. I’ve always been an early bird. I like to be the first guy in the office in the morning. Today, I got in around 6:00 AM. Our clients are a timezone away so it’s actually 7:00 AM their time. And I got to work answering emails and doing the million things that come up as we get ready to open a new call center.
Ah, but I’ll make up for it! I’ll leave early. (At least earlier than my coworkers who get in at normal business hours.)
It was a great plan. . all the way up until 4:30 in the afternoon when I was ready to head out.
Rodney, we need you on the call floor. Ten workstations just died all at the same time.
One of my coworkers asked
Why are you going down there?
It’s more than 5 impacted stations. The client considers that a major outage.
Fortunately, it was simple. A power cable that fed the entire row had a short. But, by the time the electrician showed up, diagnosed the problem, figured out that he didn’t have a spare part, checked and realized we didn’t have a spare part elsewhere in the building, and made a return appointment for Friday, It was after six o’clock.
I’m really hoping I come up to speed on our new client processes quickly. These half-days are killing me.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife and thirteen children and one grandchild.
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Sam, you’ve guided the narrows on the Menomenee, right?
Yeah, all last year. The trickiest bit is right at the start. You have to get everyone to paddle right and then at the right moment paddle left like mad.
And if you’re too slow?
You go right over Volkswagen and probably dump your guests into the river. That’s the section that makes it a Class IV.
What would you say if our current guide, Max went over Volkswagen every trip. . .on purpose?
I’d say he’s a terrible guide and he’s going to get somebody killed if he’s not careful.
A few days ago I talked about How To Screw Up. . .And Win A Customer For Life. That post from Monday looks at the way you can turn a mistake into an opportunity to win customers.
But, I failed to give the other half of the screw up scenario:
Don’t screw up on purpose!
I know it sounds really obvious, but it’s more common than you might expect. Think about it, you understand your business better than anyone else. If anyone can manufacture a convincing crisis, it’s you. And then, when you “solve” your crisis, you get to be the hero. And you get to do all those cool things I talked about on Monday.
What could possibly go wrong?
Let’s start with the fact that if you are dishonest with your customers, even if they don’t find out, YOU will know. It will impact you and more importantly it will impact your employees. If they see you intentionally manufacturing a crisis for customers, what are they going to think the next time you tell them you need them to stay late? They are going to think you are doing the same thing to them as you do to your customers.
Trust is a fragile thing. It takes a long time to build and can be destroyed in a instant.
The second issue with manufactured crisis is liability. The scenario I quoted above really happened. I was helping to manage a rafting company in Wisconsin. The Menomenee River had a very short, but very fast set of rapids. Sam was an experienced river guide. Getting past Volkswagen was a real challenge and Same went an entire season without missing that turn.
Max on the other hand figured out that customers give tips. And if they think you have saved their life, or the life of their child, they give bigger tips. This wasn’t some ride on Splash Mountain at Disney World. This was a dangerous stretch of river, and Max was putting every boatload of guests he took down at risk so that he could score a few extra bucks.
I didn’t have the power to fire him and I left half way through the season. But, I honestly worried everytime he went out that someone was going to die. And they would die because he manufactured a crisis on purpose.
Hopefully your crisis don’t risk loss of life or limb. But, the concept is the same. Trying to manufacture crisis so that you can “save the day” is like a stock broker who tries to time the market. You might get it right once. Maybe twice. But, eventually you are going to either REALLY screw it up, or you are going to get found out.
Distinguish yourself and your company by providing better service, or a better widget, or a better value. But, avoid the cheap trick of trying to manufacture a crisis simply so you can play the hero.
It’s a false fame that will eventually turn to dross.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife and thirteen children and one grandchild.
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I can’t add a user to a network Organizational Unit. I have to have one of our Desktop engineers do it.
I can’t modify a firewall rule. I have to have one of our network engineers do it.
I cannot generate a monthly availability report. I have to have one of our database engineers do it.
I can’t even help people with a question on the phone about one of our products. We have agents to do that.
Slowly the realization hit me. From a technical standpoint, I had no skills. Our printer is broken. I have no clue how to begin fixing it.
This was a difficult realization for me. There was a time where I was the very best in the world at what I did. (The Power of Saying I Don’t Know, How I Saved The EPA, Sometimes You Just Get Lucky.) I’m no longer that guy.
Former Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton wrote the bestselling baseball book, “Ball Four.”
He describes how he knew when he was no longer a professional pitcher. It was long after he’d retired from active playing and as a pitching coach he could no longer get college kids to strike out.
I was there. I could probably get it back, but I realized that I didn’t really want to. I no longer was fascinated by how networks and computers worked. Oh, I like working in IT, but my focus now is on the people and how they want to use software and systems rather than the systems themselves.
So, if I lacked pretty much all technical skills, why do I have a job? Why do I feel like I’m a critical part to the success of my current project?
Because, while I may lack skills, I’ve got a mouth. I can talk. Yes, I know that some people will point out that talking is ALSO a skill, but it’s difficult to point to a task that is accomplished by talking. Talking is talking not doing.
But, my current job is all about talking. And I enjoy it. I have to remind myself that talking is a means to an end, not the end in and of itself. In other words, I don’t want to be the guy who wanders around wasting everyone’s time by sucking up all their time.
Project Managers also need to be able to put together a project plan. I’ll talk about that aspect of my job another day. But, the talking part is a big part.
I work for a telecommunication company. We have lots and lots of phone lines. I was introduced to the unique culture of my company when I had to meet with two other PMs working on my project. We were 3/4 of a “cube farm. I shared a wall with Mike and he shared a wall with me and Chris. And Chris was kitty-corner across from me. (Or katty-corner as Mike would say. . .something about being from the East.) Anyway, we needed to discuss a document so naturally rather than get up and walk 20 feet to the conference room, we fired up Microsoft Lync and held an online meeting while we were literally 3 feet apart.
That’s what we do. . .we talk.
It’s a funny thing about skills that are easy for you and not as easy for others. You tend to discount their importance. I’ve been doing project management work for over a decade. It’s second nature to realize that you talk to different people different ways. With this executive, you need to be deferential. With that one direct. This director is hesitant to make a decision, so you need to present him with an iron clad case. That one is given to snap judgements, so make sure you’ve thought through the possible ramifications.
A routine maintenance schedule change came through my mailbox last week. Within minutes an account manager sent me a note reminding me that the client needed to be informed.
Already sent it.
So, yes, I understand that talking is a skill. Well, talking effectively is. But, I still miss the days when I was the doer, not necessarily the talker.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife and thirteen children and one grandchild.
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Mr Bliss, this is Jared Grotegut down at Rocky’s. There’s been a slight problem with your bill.
I had recently moved back to Utah after living in Washington for about 10 years. The two hardest things to find in a new town, are a good mechanic and a good dry cleaners. This story is about a mechanic.
Actually, Jared wasn’t a mechanic. He was the manager of Rocky’s American Car Care in Orem, Ut. And it was his job to talk to customers.
I went to Rocky’s because it was in the same location as the mechanic I’d used ten years earlier. That sounds like a stupid reason to pick a mechanic, I know. But, the point is when you are new in town you have to start somewhere. I didn’t know anyone in town. I figured this was as good as picking a name out of a phone book. Besides, the garage was close to our house.
I don’t remember exactly what work I needed done. In fact, at the time the work was done, I didn’t know exactly what I was having done. I’m not really a car guy. I can flush my radiator and change a tire, but I’d really just rather pay someone to work on my car.
In Washington, I’d found an excellent mechanic. Eric was the owner of a Chevron station that also did automotive repair. After ten years, I trusted him implicitly. I also think I ended up funding at least one of his kids’ college education with my car and truck repairs.
I do remember that one thing Rocky’s did was replace the calipers. I don’t even know what a caliper does, but I know they are pretty pricy. The total bill was $1300 and the calipers were about half that.
This might be what a caliper looks like
(Photo Credit: Advanced Auto Parts)
Because I don’t know a caliper from a tie-rod, I paid the bill and then called my former mechanic.
Eric, I have a quick question for you.
Sure.
I’m going to read off the invoice for some repair work I had done and I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me if it sounds reasonable.
I read him the work order and the rates and prices.
So, what do you think?
It might be a little high. It’s not totally out of the ballpark but probably on the high side.
Thanks.
Oh well. I figured I’d need to keep looking for a new mechanic. I didn’t really expect to get lucky the first time. A few days later I got the phone call from Jared that I referenced above.
Mr Bliss, this is Jared Grotegut down at Rocky’s. There’s been a slight problem with your bill.
Oh?
Yeah. I apologize, but when I wrote up the bill I didn’t realize that calipers come in a package of two. So, I ended up billing you twice for the calipers. It was completely my fault. You don’t have to do anything, but there will be a $300 credit going back on your credit card. I just wanted you to understand why.
It was one of the most amazing phone calls I’ve ever received. As you might imagine I decided I’d found my new mechanic. Now, you might be thinking that this phone call was a great reason to NOT return to Rocky’s. After all, they screwed up the bill. . .by a lot.
But, that’s exactly why I was going back. Everyone makes mistakes. The key is what you do after the mistake. He didn’t have to call me. If he’d wanted to cheat me, he could have just kept my $300. It’s the power of admitting a mistake.
Eventually Jared left Rocky’s. He moved to another shop in Provo, UT. It was about 15 miles further away, but a good mechanic is hard to find. We also changed our business and followed him. Another year went by and Jared went back to work for Rocky’s at his Spanish Fork Store. This store is about 35 miles away. We followed him again, even though there were a lot of service places between Orem and Spanish Fork. I suggested him might be doing this on purpose.
You’re just trying to see how far I’ll drive to keep bringing my cars to you! Next you’ll be moving South to Payson.
You are going to screw up in business. Everyone does. If you don’t screw up, you aren’t taking enough risks. In addition to giving your team permission to screw up (Managment Rules that Make No Sense #1: In the Absence of Orders, Attack!) you also need to decide what you are going to do as a company when you screw up.
I’ve talked often about my friend Howard Tayler, and his award winning web comic Schlock Mercenary. Howard has a unique attitude toward customer service. He not only values, he cherishes each customer.
Did the mailman crease the book we sent you? We’ll send you another.
Did the delivery person leave your package on the porch and it got rained on? We’ll send you another.
Are you ordering from a military base? We’ll send you a couple extra.
I have literally never seen Howard, or Sandra, his business manager and wife, ever refuse to make an order right. No questions. No “ship us back the damaged one.” Not even a “post a picture of the damage.”
If you order from the Tayler corporation, they will ALWAYS make it right. Does that mean that sometimes they possibly get taken advantage of? Sure.
But, what is amazing are their results. They are very similar to the results Jared got by calling me and admitting a mistake. Their customers are loyal. I have spent far more with Jared over the years than those $300 calipers. Howard’s fans come back year after year, buy his books, fund his kickstarter campaigns and volunteer to help him ship his products.
How do you handle customer complaints? How do you handle mistakes? If you handle them correctly, and by correctly, I mean you own up to your mistakes and make things right with customers, you will win their loyalty for life.
(Note: I often use pseudonyms in telling these stories. I want to tell my story, but not necessarily overly share someone else’s information. Jared Grotegut is his real name. Rocky’s is at 375 N Main St Spanish Fork, UT 84660 and at www.rockystirepros.com. Jared currently manages the Oil Change shop. If you live in Utah County, I highly recommend them. Ask for Jared and tell him that Rodney Bliss sent you.)
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife and thirteen children and one grandchild.
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Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com
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Can you win by losing?
Can you gain by giving up?
You can if you do it right.
We were moving into a new building. My company had purchased the building and completely redesigned the interior. One of the unique features were “team rooms.” These were conference rooms that were shared by the teams in the cube farms on each side. So, there was one team room for every 16 cubes; eight were on one side of the team room and eight on the other. The idea was that the two teams had nearly exclusive access to “their” team room. The plan was that the team rooms would NOT be schedulable in the Microsoft Exchange system.
It was a terrible plan.
Oh, it had the best of intentions. But, in practice it fell apart. My messaging engineering team shared a team room with our Program Management team. We worked very closely together, but like two good friends who decide to date, we could NOT share a bathroom. . .I mean team room. When I wanted to have my team meeting, Brandt would be in the team room on a conference call. When Brandt wanted to use the room, I’d be in doing a 1:1 interview with one of my engineers.
We decided that if our two teams couldn’t peacefully coexist in the “unscheduleable” team room, no teams would be able to. So, what to do?
I got with the PM and we decided that the best solution was to make the team rooms schedulable. However, we put some rules in place to keep them exclusive. Only people sitting around the team room could schedule it. And they had the right to kick out squatters.
We took the plan to the CIO’s chief of staff, Jeremy.
Jeremy, we want to make the team rooms schedulable.
But, we decided they would be open.
Right, but our two teams couldn’t make it work, we’ve got a plan to keep them for the exclusive use of the intended teams.
He signed off on the plan and I got busy implementing it. Everyone loved it.
Everyone except Marcus.
Marcus was a director over 40 or 50 people. He insisted that HIS team rooms not be scheduleable. This was a mistake and I knew it. But, he also outranked me.
I explained our reasons. I explained how only his teams would have access to them. I explained our experience.
Marcus wasn’t buying it.
I went to his team. They begged me to keep the rooms scheduleable. One of them literally promised me his first born child if I would keep them scheduleable. (Yeah, I’ve had kids that I’ve wanted to give away too.)
Marcus wouldn’t budge.
I tried to ignore him and wait him out.
He escalated.
Now, some of you might be asking why I didn’t tell him that Jeremy, the chief of staff had approved it? Because executive sponsorship is like air cover. You really want to have it, but don’t want to use it. It became clear that Marcus was willing to spend a huge amount of political capital to keep the rooms off the schedule. I realized that he would escalate as high as he needed to to get his way. I realized that he was going to win.
So, I did the smart thing, I let him.
Your team analyst can go in and remove the users associated with each team room and they will appear in the address book, but no one will be able to schedule them.
I don’t blame you if you are confused. Did I no longer care? No. I cared a lot. Was I suddenly convinced of the rightness of his position? No. I think he was going to cause his teams unnecessary grief. So, why agree with him and give him what he wanted? Because I was going to lose. He outranked me in the organization and he was willing to push this as high as necessary. So, I could have stuck to my guns. I could have fought to the last out. But, to what end? It would have ended up in front of the CIO as he explained to me that Marcus’s team rooms were going to be taken off the calendar.
Why accept a loss if you don’t have to?
By agreeing with him, he comes away thinking that he eventually convinced me. He’s not my enemy. He might think I’m a little slow on the uptake. (He might be right.) But, what report will go back to the CIO?
Everyone’s happy with the state of the team rooms.
Who was responsible for making everyone happy with the team rooms?
Yep. So, I get credit for a successful rollout, and at the same time avoid wasting political capital in a losing cause.
If you have to go anyway, it’s better to lead than to follow.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife and thirteen children and one grandchild.
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I don’t believe in “anomolies,” Rodney.
What do you mean?
I mean I don’t believe that computers and networks just randomly break. I think that if you investigate long enough and well enough, you can reproduce any issue.
Jack is the network manager at work. He’s very good at what he does and his engineers are a joy to work with. But, in this case, I think Jack is wrong.
It’s been a while since I told a WordPerfect story. This one goes way back to the beginnings of WordPerfect Office. (Back To Where It All Began.) WordPerfect Office, which later became Novell GroupWise, was first released on August 8, 1988. (8/8/88) The first service pack came out two months later (10/10/88.) Both releases were horrible. But, everything begins somewhere. It got much better.
As I explained in How Batman Almost Got Me Fired, WordPerfect was a file based messaging system. Pretty much all email systems today have databases driving them and storing their messages. But, 25 years ago, file based systems were state-of-the-art. Everyone had them, cc:Mail, Microsoft Mail, and WordPerfect Office.
The problem with a file based email system is how to keep track of file names. You don’t want emails being copied over each other like some kid’s english paper titled “Doc1.doc.”
Microsoft “solved” this problem with something called a “control” file. It was a file that contained a counter. Every time someone wanted to send an email the email client went to the control file, got a number and then incremented the Control file.
When you open and close a file a whole bunch of times, you risk it becoming corrupt. And the Control file did. . .a lot.
WordPerfect took a different approach. They had an algorithm that would calculate a unique name based on several factors. The programmer who wrote the algorithm came down to talk to support one day.
What factors go into the message file name?
Well, it’s a whole bunch of things, the clock on the sender’s PC, the size of the message, a hash of the senders name and a couple of others.
But, would it be possible for two people with similar names, to send messages that were exactly the same size at the exactly same time on their clock and create conflicting file names?
Well. . .
But, is it possible?
I guess, but if you got the error once, you’d never be able to duplicate it.
I wish Jack had been there to hear it.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife and thirteen children and one grandchild.
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The US customs agent was spending a really long time studying my son’s Haitian passport. We were coming back from one of many trips to Haiti in the process of adopting a sibling group of 4. This son, the youngest had a heart condition that required treatment in the United States. He’d come in on a medical visa a couple months earlier. His visa was good for six months so we weren’t too worried about his right to be in the country.
The silence stretched on as people in other lines got a cursory glance and a “Welcome home” from the agents on either side of us. Finally, my wife, anticipating the reason for the agent’s confusion spoke.
See, we. . .
Honey! If he has any questions, he’ll ask.
The customs agent looked up briefly, glanced from me to my wife and went back to studying my son’s passport.
Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein is one of my favorite books. During a key scene, the main character Juan Rico, a military recruit is up on charges for failure to use his instruments during a simulated instruments-only exercise. While he’s waiting for his case to be heard, another recruit, Ted Hendrick presents his case. In attempting to explain himself to the Captain, Hendrick makes his situation worse.
Uh…well, we were ordered to freeze and I hit the dirt and I found I was on this anthill. So I got to my knees, to move over a couple of feet, and I was hit from behind and knocked flat and he [Zim] yelled at me — and I bounced up and popped him one and he –…
You…struck…your…company commander?
And just like that Hendrick is convicted of a hanging offense, but let off with ten lashes and a dishonorable discharge.
Next, it’s Rico’s turn to explain his case. Wisely he keeps his mouth shut, accepts the ten lashes and learns a valuable lesson.
Often the best explanation is to keep your mouth shut.
These are lessons we can also apply in business. It’s a hard skill to learn, when to keep quiet and when to speak up. Unfortunately I’m not great at either. But, I’m better than I used to be.
Early in my career I worked for WordPerfect Corporation. After “I Saved The EPA (Don’t Tell Pete!)” WordPerfect didn’t know exactly what do with me. They knew that they wanted to eventually figure out how to capitalize on this event, but in the mean time they stuck me back on the phones in support.
I didn’t take it well. In fact, at one point the EPA called and I vented to them that I wasn’t happy and I didn’t think they should be happy with this new arrangement.
Call centers record calls, “For training purposes.” Yup, I got nailed. I got pulled into a meeting with my boss, and her boss, and I think there might have even been a corporate attorney around.
Like Rico in Starship Troopers, I quickly realized that I’d screwed up and any amount of “explanation” on my part was likely to make it worse.
You’re right. I shouldn’t have been saying those type things to a client.
I don’t think we need to terminate you at this point. A note on this will go into your file. If the problem reoccurs there will be additional measures.
It’s been 25 years and so far, I’ve avoided screwing up like that again. Which is why standing in New York’s Kennedy airport in the no-mans land in customs I was content to wait for as long as the agent felt necessary.
Finally, after what felt like 15 minutes, he made a notation in our son’s passport, stamped it with an entry stamp and handed it to my wife.
Welcome back to the United States.
We didn’t dare crack open his passport until we were in our hotel that night. We realized that we had come one tiny pen mark away from leaving our son in no-mans land.
He had a medical visa all right. And it was good for six months. But, it was good for a single entry into the United States during those six month. This was his second trip through.
So, how did he get through the second time?
During his first entry, the customs agent had failed to mark his visa where it said
Visit __ of one
Our agent was confused because he could see that our son had come into the country before, he had an entry stamp from months earlier, and yet the visa wasn’t updated. Finally, the agent put a “1” in the space to ensure he couldn’t come and go again.
Had we verbally stated that he had already entered the US previously, I’m convinced the agent would have taken our word as evidence that our son couldn’t reenter the country.
Sometimes it’s best to not speak unless spoken to.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife and thirteen children and one grandchild.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com