4 ms·

One of my best managers had the default response of 'no' to any unexpected questions with unrealistic deadlines. Nothing flowery, just "no my team is not avail

One of my best managers had the default response of 'no' to any unexpected questions with unrealistic deadlines. Nothing flowery, just "no my team is not available to do that." Usually worked well ( except when C-levels were invoked to over-ride ) and saved us from a lot of half-arsed unplanned work at silly hours. And all the post facto refactoring that would involve. Her mindset was that positive answers could only be made when there had been sufficient internal discussion with all the facts present.

GauntletWizard 11y ago
The phrase I heard tossed around is "Your poor planning is not my emergency". It could probably be more nicely worded.
- RBerenguel 11y ago
  It's worth re-reading Hamming's "You and your research" to find where it appears (I just did and thought it was worth mentioning.)
- snorkel 11y ago
  That stance can also backfire in the form of "OK you're too busy to help me so I'll hire outside contractors to do it instead." which leads to a bigger mess to sort out later. I try to at least offer a partial solution.
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    The more unrealistic their demands, the less understanding they have over their situation. I found the best approach is to spend 10-20 minutes to help them think things through, so they understand what they're asking for and what they should be asking for and what a realistic timeframe is. Then put that on the roadmap.
  - shostack 11y ago
    Not just that, but it creates a true "us vs. them" mentality in an organization where you're all on the same team. I've found in my career that there are very few people who want things done on extremely short notice with short deadlines for shits and giggles. Most of the time they are responding to some external (or higher level internal) pressure. Even if it is due to less than ideal planning, they are typically aware that they are asking a lot. Of course, that is in reasonable work environments.
joe_the_user 11y ago
I'd agree that's the right answer. The problem is that once other actors realize that this is how you operate, the question immediately becomes "how do we override this person's decision". Aside from just accumulating enough influence to make your positions stick, I'm not sure what the best approach - maybe it's necessary to give the impression you'll agree to some of those unrealistic questions merely to stay in the decision making loop.
- dingaling 11y ago
  > The problem is that once other actors realize that this is how you operate, the question immediately becomes "how do we override this person's decision". Eaxctly so! But the fact that they had to go up through officer levels to achieve that usually acted as a restraint, as quite often the senior exec would ask "tell me how you screwed-up this project so badly that you need another team to save your bacon" It also bought us some time to work-out what exactly was the question and how to solve it! Ah the greatest luxury of corporate life; time for thinking. Sadly, she moved on and up and we received a new manager who jumped at the word 'firedrill'. "Yessir I'll deploy my men!" type of response, every time.
  - newjersey 11y ago
    > But the fact that they had to go up through officer levels to achieve that usually acted as a restraint, as quite often the senior exec would ask "tell me how you screwed-up this project so badly that you need another team to save your bacon" Can a developer on Kansas City team not ask a seemingly straight-forward question about the current implementation of a service that the Memphis team runs? What would you say if you sent an instant message or an email to someone in another team and instead of getting a reply from them, you hear back nothing at all and one week later your boss says he is forwarding an email sent by another manager which includes the answer to your question (nothing secret, just details that we needed to know in the first place). Now apparently, the person I asked the question just forwarded the question to their manager with the answer. Their manager, being on vacation, couldn't forward the email for a week. What would you do next time you had a question? Would you contact your manager and have them contact the other team's manager and have them contact the project lead to answer a question? Or would you try to design your system so you had to interact with the Memphis team as little as possible?
praneshp 11y ago
I think this type of answer is great for "unexpected questions with unrealistic deadlines". I once had the misfortune of working with a manager on a team tasked with releasing our code into production. As release master, I'd email him on code complete, when the QE cycle finished, and when it was good for release. His response was always: "Our team is really busy right now, let's get together in two weeks and discuss".
Spooky23 11y ago
That says more about your boss's (or her boss's) level of punch within the organization and horse sense about the seriousness of the issue. I've been on both sides of that question. It doesn't always end well.

GauntletWizard 11y ago

The phrase I heard tossed around is "Your poor planning is not my emergency". It could probably be more nicely worded.

RBerenguel 11y ago
It's worth re-reading Hamming's "You and your research" to find where it appears (I just did and thought it was worth mentioning.)
snorkel 11y ago
That stance can also backfire in the form of "OK you're too busy to help me so I'll hire outside contractors to do it instead." which leads to a bigger mess to sort out later. I try to at least offer a partial solution.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  The more unrealistic their demands, the less understanding they have over their situation. I found the best approach is to spend 10-20 minutes to help them think things through, so they understand what they're asking for and what they should be asking for and what a realistic timeframe is. Then put that on the roadmap.
- shostack 11y ago
  Not just that, but it creates a true "us vs. them" mentality in an organization where you're all on the same team. I've found in my career that there are very few people who want things done on extremely short notice with short deadlines for shits and giggles. Most of the time they are responding to some external (or higher level internal) pressure. Even if it is due to less than ideal planning, they are typically aware that they are asking a lot. Of course, that is in reasonable work environments.

joe_the_user 11y ago

I'd agree that's the right answer. The problem is that once other actors realize that this is how you operate, the question immediately becomes "how do we override this person's decision". Aside from just accumulating enough influence to make your positions stick, I'm not sure what the best approach - maybe it's necessary to give the impression you'll agree to some of those unrealistic questions merely to stay in the decision making loop.

dingaling 11y ago
> The problem is that once other actors realize that this is how you operate, the question immediately becomes "how do we override this person's decision". Eaxctly so! But the fact that they had to go up through officer levels to achieve that usually acted as a restraint, as quite often the senior exec would ask "tell me how you screwed-up this project so badly that you need another team to save your bacon" It also bought us some time to work-out what exactly was the question and how to solve it! Ah the greatest luxury of corporate life; time for thinking. Sadly, she moved on and up and we received a new manager who jumped at the word 'firedrill'. "Yessir I'll deploy my men!" type of response, every time.
- newjersey 11y ago
  > But the fact that they had to go up through officer levels to achieve that usually acted as a restraint, as quite often the senior exec would ask "tell me how you screwed-up this project so badly that you need another team to save your bacon" Can a developer on Kansas City team not ask a seemingly straight-forward question about the current implementation of a service that the Memphis team runs? What would you say if you sent an instant message or an email to someone in another team and instead of getting a reply from them, you hear back nothing at all and one week later your boss says he is forwarding an email sent by another manager which includes the answer to your question (nothing secret, just details that we needed to know in the first place). Now apparently, the person I asked the question just forwarded the question to their manager with the answer. Their manager, being on vacation, couldn't forward the email for a week. What would you do next time you had a question? Would you contact your manager and have them contact the other team's manager and have them contact the project lead to answer a question? Or would you try to design your system so you had to interact with the Memphis team as little as possible?

praneshp 11y ago

I think this type of answer is great for "unexpected questions with unrealistic deadlines". I once had the misfortune of working with a manager on a team tasked with releasing our code into production. As release master, I'd email him on code complete, when the QE cycle finished, and when it was good for release. His response was always: "Our team is really busy right now, let's get together in two weeks and discuss".

Spooky23 11y ago

That says more about your boss's (or her boss's) level of punch within the organization and horse sense about the seriousness of the issue. I've been on both sides of that question. It doesn't always end well.