6 ms·

> "So for a whole year, they knew this was coming. But nobody wants all that additional spend, so close to year end. Departments bickering over who’s responsib

> "So for a whole year, they knew this was coming. But nobody wants all that additional spend, so close to year end. Departments bickering over who’s responsibility it was, who’s budget it came out of, and so on. So everyone dug their heels in, and we continued to shout “iceberg!” from the sidelines." I've seen this play out multiple times over the years. What's the solution?

protastus 4y ago
The solution is escalation.
- kulahan 4y ago
  Yep. The whole point of escalation is so someone can tell everyone to shut up and do X. Solves all these problems.
- madaxe_again 4y ago
  Correct answer. You do not win by playing a defensive game, and it’s essential to realise that the organisation’s goals are not your goals. The correct strategy here is to go on the offensive. Make friends with your manager’s manager’s manager. Just go full on social bribery mode. Invite them for Christmas dinner. Even if they decline, it will make them remember you, and next time, ask them to a barbecue or a picnic instead, and they’ll say yes. If you can’t throw that high, shoot for your manager’s manager. Once you’re in, get the dagger in your manager’s back, but only once you’ve made them a pariah, take their role, and repeat until you retire wealthy. Remember to take every opportunity to accrue political capital. Eventually you will be in a position to fire people who make poor decisions, but you won’t, because the salary is good, and retirement is only a few years off. You literally cannot prevent this behaviour in any human-operated organisation of any scale beyond a fistful of people - you can only co-opt it.
- tedunangst 4y ago
  Who should escalate to who and what should that person have done in this scenario?
- throwaway892238 4y ago
  Unless the org chart was designed deliberately to make escalation produce no result.
bauble 4y ago
Leadership.
- PenguinCoder 4y ago
  *Better leadership.
Blackthorn 4y ago
Finding and solving issues like this is one of the reasons leaders get paid. If they aren't doing their job, there's nothing you can do about it.
mrguyorama 4y ago
The solution is to stop treating upper management as gods who can do no wrong, and start firing them for creating hostile and terrible systems.
scottLobster 4y ago
Leadership. Unfortunately most companies with bloated middle management layers spread the responsibility so thin that the level of consensus required to take action would stump the reincarnation of George Washington, Agustus, Ghandi and Genghis Khan combined (granted Genghis would probably just murder anyone who opposed him, which sadly would probably improve a lot of companies). Even in my program of just north of 100 people broken infrastructure follows that same pattern. Something moderately breaks, the devs complain, they are sympathetically told to make do. Rinse and repeat until the devs realize their complaints never get addressed and stop complaining past a quick email. Then something REALLY breaks with no workaround, devs mention it's been heading this way for a while, and management, all aghast, exclaims "well why didn't you say so earlier if this was such a problem?". It's to the point where we (the devs) have started keeping locally archived email records just for the "told you so". Which of course makes us no friends because we point the blame where it belongs, so we're officially covered but our complaints get listened to even less. And the infrastructure is fixed just enough to limp along until the next catastrophic explosion. You need someone who gives a shit with the power to crack the whip. In short, you need to give someone enough power that they can potentially abuse it, something modern business is allergic to.
- throwawaysleep 4y ago
  I think they should focus on fixing the "gives a shit" part of it. There is very little reason for an employee to care about preventing a failure they will not be directly held accountable for. I don't care if we lose clients. I don't care if we get hacked. My life is not impacted one way or another by whether the divisions I work in succeed or fail, unless they utterly fail. So if this Intune thing landed on my desk, I would do nothing about it. Give me some incentive to care and I would.
- madaxe_again 4y ago
  Your post describes the problem more succinctly than you might think. You are trying to do a good job which might lead to a promotion. You see the rules and operations of the organisation as something to work within. The people who ignore you are trying to get promoted. They see the rules and operations of the organisation as a irritating backdrop to their personal goals. The job could be anything. Ascent is all that matters. They will get promoted. You will retire one day, your nerves fried. The incentives are all wrong, and playing the social metagame rather than playing the game by the rules always results in an advantage, and thus this behaviour is inherently embedded in any human structure. The solution isn’t “better management” - it’s in fundamental societal change, which ain’t coming any time soon.
pm3003 4y ago
Some low level guy using an opportunity to alert upper / upper-middle management, more or less backed by his or her middle manager. Seen some years ago. A mail was then sent from CEO to CxO along the lines "it seems there's something hiding under a rock there, please check it out". The guy who talked about the thing was a recognized expert in his own domain, while the CEO was on a kind of "thumbs-up tour". The manoeuver had been briefly discussed with the expert's hierarchical chain and pitched as an opportunity for action rather than "those guys don't do their jobs". A small shitstorm followed in middle management, at the end the problem was quickly solved, deemed "not that important in the end", and since no one was at fault and no one innocent, everyone quickly went quiet again.
sidewndr46 4y ago
This reminds me of a particular project that I was tangentially involved in. It had a large capital expenditure at the start of it. After working there for a few years, I eventually realized the project was scheduled for next quarter. Literally. As in, no one ever wanted to take the budget hit this quarter so it was always just included in next quarter's budget.
- wisemang 4y ago
  “Q5”
zokier 4y ago
People parrot "leadership" as if saying that people need to do better makes it happen. More constructive suggestion is to make sure these sort of things get good post-mortems, even better if publicized and made case studies in mba curriculums. Thats would have at least a chance of people learning how to be better leaders.
throwawaysleep 4y ago
Employees need incentives to prevent problems, even if they aren't responsible for them. In this case, the smart thing for every person who could have done something was to take no action, as they would get no credit for preventing a problem but would take a budget or resource hit for doing so. I am a fire fighter, not a fire marshall. Fire fighters are heros. The fire marshall is a pest.
game_the0ry 4y ago
> What's the solution? Archive those CYA emails and enjoy the popcorn as you watch management sink on the Titanic.
advisedwang 4y ago
The author goes on to say centralized IT procurement. I.e. IT should have been the one supply devices, in which case they'd have replaced all the relevant devices rather than it being the responsibility of every dept.
MagicMoonlight 4y ago
Set aside a percentage of the cost each year in a pot so that when you need to buy you can just use those savings instead of draining your entire budget.
strken 4y ago
Can someone who knows more than me tell me whether "negotiate with compliance to disable those devices for a single day two months in advance so the ensuing shitstorm only costs $10 million" is a working solution?

protastus 4y ago

The solution is escalation.

kulahan 4y ago
Yep. The whole point of escalation is so someone can tell everyone to shut up and do X. Solves all these problems.
madaxe_again 4y ago
Correct answer. You do not win by playing a defensive game, and it’s essential to realise that the organisation’s goals are not your goals. The correct strategy here is to go on the offensive. Make friends with your manager’s manager’s manager. Just go full on social bribery mode. Invite them for Christmas dinner. Even if they decline, it will make them remember you, and next time, ask them to a barbecue or a picnic instead, and they’ll say yes. If you can’t throw that high, shoot for your manager’s manager. Once you’re in, get the dagger in your manager’s back, but only once you’ve made them a pariah, take their role, and repeat until you retire wealthy. Remember to take every opportunity to accrue political capital. Eventually you will be in a position to fire people who make poor decisions, but you won’t, because the salary is good, and retirement is only a few years off. You literally cannot prevent this behaviour in any human-operated organisation of any scale beyond a fistful of people - you can only co-opt it.
tedunangst 4y ago
Who should escalate to who and what should that person have done in this scenario?
throwaway892238 4y ago
Unless the org chart was designed deliberately to make escalation produce no result.

bauble 4y ago

Leadership.

PenguinCoder 4y ago
*Better leadership.

Blackthorn 4y ago

Finding and solving issues like this is one of the reasons leaders get paid. If they aren't doing their job, there's nothing you can do about it.

mrguyorama 4y ago

The solution is to stop treating upper management as gods who can do no wrong, and start firing them for creating hostile and terrible systems.

scottLobster 4y ago

Leadership. Unfortunately most companies with bloated middle management layers spread the responsibility so thin that the level of consensus required to take action would stump the reincarnation of George Washington, Agustus, Ghandi and Genghis Khan combined (granted Genghis would probably just murder anyone who opposed him, which sadly would probably improve a lot of companies). Even in my program of just north of 100 people broken infrastructure follows that same pattern. Something moderately breaks, the devs complain, they are sympathetically told to make do. Rinse and repeat until the devs realize their complaints never get addressed and stop complaining past a quick email. Then something REALLY breaks with no workaround, devs mention it's been heading this way for a while, and management, all aghast, exclaims "well why didn't you say so earlier if this was such a problem?". It's to the point where we (the devs) have started keeping locally archived email records just for the "told you so". Which of course makes us no friends because we point the blame where it belongs, so we're officially covered but our complaints get listened to even less. And the infrastructure is fixed just enough to limp along until the next catastrophic explosion. You need someone who gives a shit with the power to crack the whip. In short, you need to give someone enough power that they can potentially abuse it, something modern business is allergic to.

throwawaysleep 4y ago
I think they should focus on fixing the "gives a shit" part of it. There is very little reason for an employee to care about preventing a failure they will not be directly held accountable for. I don't care if we lose clients. I don't care if we get hacked. My life is not impacted one way or another by whether the divisions I work in succeed or fail, unless they utterly fail. So if this Intune thing landed on my desk, I would do nothing about it. Give me some incentive to care and I would.
madaxe_again 4y ago
Your post describes the problem more succinctly than you might think. You are trying to do a good job which might lead to a promotion. You see the rules and operations of the organisation as something to work within. The people who ignore you are trying to get promoted. They see the rules and operations of the organisation as a irritating backdrop to their personal goals. The job could be anything. Ascent is all that matters. They will get promoted. You will retire one day, your nerves fried. The incentives are all wrong, and playing the social metagame rather than playing the game by the rules always results in an advantage, and thus this behaviour is inherently embedded in any human structure. The solution isn’t “better management” - it’s in fundamental societal change, which ain’t coming any time soon.

pm3003 4y ago

Some low level guy using an opportunity to alert upper / upper-middle management, more or less backed by his or her middle manager. Seen some years ago. A mail was then sent from CEO to CxO along the lines "it seems there's something hiding under a rock there, please check it out". The guy who talked about the thing was a recognized expert in his own domain, while the CEO was on a kind of "thumbs-up tour". The manoeuver had been briefly discussed with the expert's hierarchical chain and pitched as an opportunity for action rather than "those guys don't do their jobs". A small shitstorm followed in middle management, at the end the problem was quickly solved, deemed "not that important in the end", and since no one was at fault and no one innocent, everyone quickly went quiet again.

sidewndr46 4y ago

This reminds me of a particular project that I was tangentially involved in. It had a large capital expenditure at the start of it. After working there for a few years, I eventually realized the project was scheduled for next quarter. Literally. As in, no one ever wanted to take the budget hit this quarter so it was always just included in next quarter's budget.

wisemang 4y ago
“Q5”

zokier 4y ago

People parrot "leadership" as if saying that people need to do better makes it happen. More constructive suggestion is to make sure these sort of things get good post-mortems, even better if publicized and made case studies in mba curriculums. Thats would have at least a chance of people learning how to be better leaders.

throwawaysleep 4y ago

Employees need incentives to prevent problems, even if they aren't responsible for them. In this case, the smart thing for every person who could have done something was to take no action, as they would get no credit for preventing a problem but would take a budget or resource hit for doing so. I am a fire fighter, not a fire marshall. Fire fighters are heros. The fire marshall is a pest.

game_the0ry 4y ago

> What's the solution? Archive those CYA emails and enjoy the popcorn as you watch management sink on the Titanic.

advisedwang 4y ago

The author goes on to say centralized IT procurement. I.e. IT should have been the one supply devices, in which case they'd have replaced all the relevant devices rather than it being the responsibility of every dept.

MagicMoonlight 4y ago

Set aside a percentage of the cost each year in a pot so that when you need to buy you can just use those savings instead of draining your entire budget.

strken 4y ago

Can someone who knows more than me tell me whether "negotiate with compliance to disable those devices for a single day two months in advance so the ensuing shitstorm only costs $10 million" is a working solution?