Annoying Management Technique #2367: The Chaos Bomb

This technique works especially well if you’re at the vice-president level, where you are powerful enough to cause huge swaths of damage, like a hurricane aimed at a trailer park, but not close enough to the actual frontline work to be anything other than completely ignorant with how the real marketplace works.

First, you want to pick an employee who has been working on a project for months, maybe even more than a year. This project should be important to the division, to the company, and especially to 50 to 60 people who depend on that project for a living. And to that employee, it should be his universe, the thing that occupies his every thought and dream, the thing that makes him lose sleep, lose his appetite, and lose his hard-on at critical moments.

As the v.p., you don’t want to actually say anything to the target for a few months. If you do, say nice things, “keep up the good work,” and such. Make the employee think everything is fine. Let him develop a false sense of security.

Then a day or so before the crucial moment that the project is launched and sent to the public, where it might actually make some money, send a small, short, blunt email to the direct manager of the target. (You can’t do this to direct reports, as they might have access to you. Your target should be two or three levels below you, ensuring insulation and limiting feedback. Actual communication might prevent the carnage you want to wreak, so keep the messages going to voice mail and the email unreturned.)

The email you send should say something like: “That thing you’ve been working on? When it launches, do everything differently, but don’t miss your sales targets. Thanks.”

For instance, if the product was meant to be sold in retail stores, and the target has spent months greasing the wheels with the corporate retail sales department, flying around the country meeting with retail buyers, working the trade shows shaking hands and selling his ass off to store mangers, and setting elaborate and expensive in-store promotions set up – you want to completely eliminate all that work and make the target start from scratch.

In that case, the email should say something like: “As an experiment, we want to distribute that product through the corporate online store only. Thanks.”

Don’t bother justifying your decision. You’re a v.p. You must be pretty bright, right? Don’t bother talking to the target about what his thoughts on the strategy are, or what his strategy has been for the past year. And you should ignore all other input from other parts of the company, some of whom were depending on revenue on that project.

The idea is to do damage, not talk. You’re a busy man. You have vacations to plan, video games to play, long lunches to take with minor celebrities, board member asses to kiss. If you want to completely screw a product launch for the sake of an “experiment” what the hell? It’s the target that will get fired (and the team that worked on the project). Not you. You golf with the CEO once a month and let him win. You are perfectly safe. Sleep well, young v.p. Your job is done.

Free to do what exactly?

We talk a lot about freedom in this country. We continually brag about how free we are to rest of the world. We feel an urgent need to defend our freedom and finance billions of dollars worth of military to do just that. Thousands upon thousands have died thinking that it was for freedom, our freedom, not theirs, as dead is pretty much as not free as you can be.

So let’s take a look at the American version of freedom…

1.    WORK -- You are expected to work at least 40 hours a week, but to get anywhere in any career you need to put in at least 50 to 60 hours a week, if not more. Those hours will NOT being doing something you love. Sure, there are a lucky few who do love their jobs, but even people who claim to adore their work would quit in a second if they won the lottery. Most people, given a million dollars, will stay home, watch Oprah, eat ice cream and masturbate a lot. Or maybe that’s just me.

2.    WEEKENDS -- When you’re not working, you have your weekends and evenings free, right? Sure, after you take out all the time doing stuff you didn’t have time for during the week: grocery shopping, clothes shopping, cleaning, cooking, medical needs (including dentists, opticians, etc.), paying bills, balancing the checkbook and the gawdaweful DMV. And god help you if you have kids. You’ll be lucky to have time for a piss.

3.   OWN YOUR OWN HOME -- But all that work gets you something, right? You’ll get to buy a house, own a piece of property to call yours, a delicious slice of American Dream Pie. It will be just like your own little country that no one can take away from you. Paint the walls pink; put ceramic gnomes in the front yard; throw wild parties. Why not? It’s the Country of You. Think again. Home owners associations will tell you exactly what you can have in your front and back and side yards, and tell you how often you have to cut your lawn. Inside, it’s best not to get creative because one day you’re going to sell the place and homes with lime-green plaid walls don’t sell well. And besides, even if you do have wonderful taste, do you really have the time to do home improvement? Have you been in that mammoth hell-hole known a Home Depot? You need a goddamn sherpa and a team of bloodhounds to find your way out of there.

4.    FRIENDS AND FAMILY -- And by the way, who gives a shit about your house anyway? You don’t have real friends. You have co-workers you live with 40 to 60 hours a week, who you’re sick of and would pay money to not see on your time off. And your family? You couldn’t stand them while you were growing up. You really want to impress them with the fireplace you installed yourself?

5.    FREE TIME -- But you do have a few free moments, right? For some small guilty pleasures that make life worth living? Moments that belong to you and you alone? Let’s see…You can read a little on the toilet. (I eat more fiber just so I can have more time to read. I’ve almost finished David Sedaris’ new book, thanks to increasing my oatmeal intake.) You can watch an hour or two of TV every night, but if it’s not HBO Sunday night, what’s really worth watching? Back-stabbing jackasses on a desert island? Super models eating roly-polies?

6.    SEX -- You can make love with the person you’re dating, or you can masturbate to porno while your spouse catches up on what money-grubbing bimbo the handsome bachelor picked to marry. And maybe, if you’re a little early to work, you can stop at Starbuck’s, read the newspaper, and stare at the asses of the girls standing in line for their lattes. That’s about it. All of life’s pleasures in our modern world, this pinnacle of civilization, this product of best the human mind has to offer – Two or three orgasms a week and two caramel Frapaccinos, with the occasional episode of Sopranos to look forward to. (And the next episode isn’t until 2006, those fucking bastards.)

7.      RETIREMENT -- So you lead the painfully typical American life of quiet desperation with a home full of crap, a soul-strangling job, and an uncaring spouse busy with his or her own comfy hell to live through. You do eventually get to retire right? You’ll finally be able to read all those great novels, travel the country, travel the world and take that three month cruise to islands where the girls don’t wear tops. Right? Well, don’t count on Social Security (raided to pay the national debt), your 401K (decimated by stock losses and a floundering economy) or the equity in your home (you can sell it but then you’ll have to buy another one, and with no job, you will have no shot at getting a loan).

Here’s what you’re free to do: Live, scratch out moments of pleasure where you can, and then die. I wish there was more to it, but that’s it as far as I can see. Thoreau bitched a lot about the shitty way life works, but he offered few solutions. We all can’t go live next to a pond and collect royalty checks on our cute little philosophical musings. And that fucking cabin probably didn’t even have broadband. Speaking of which, I think it’s porno time and one of those small moments of pleasure… 

 

 

 

A Project's Last Wishes

The best time to think of new ideas is not near the end of a project, but at the beginning. I hold that truth to be self-evident. I'm pretty sure most business people would.

But HB (the Humming Bird), works with a different kind of logic. In her view, in the last days (even hours) before a project's deadline, that's when you want to try and cram as many ideas into the plan as possible. Once something is complete, that's it; you can't change it. It's dead, to her at least. (Most sane people look at the end of a project as a birth. To her, its almost a time of mourning.)

Because of her unique view of project management, she tries to show a project a good time before it dies the death of completion. The same way a man notified he has a day to live will spend his last hours sky diving, trying to sleep with a super model, and writing a novel, the HB will try to give a 95-percent-complete project three new features, a new marketing plan and perhaps a complete floor-to-ground re-design.

This drives me bat shit. I try to breath deeply and enter the Zen zone. I try to let her madness wash through me. I even try to get some of what she wants done, with mixed success at best. Sometimes, I actually can squeeze a little more into a product, though never everything. And sometimes I just plan can't do anything.

And that's the bit that makes me go insane, I hate saying I can't do something. I hate that months of good work, work that I want my goddamn pat on the back for, becomes tarnished because the litany of ideas she has at the end aren't somehow miraculously materialized.

Do yourself and your employees a big favor. Cram all the ideas into a project at the start. Be aggressive. Ask for too much. Go crazy. It's amazing how much you can accomplish if you push yourself 6 to 12 months before a deadline.

But at the end of a project, when most of it is at the printer and clients are waiting for it and advertising is hitting, just finish it. Finish it well. But finish it.

Annoying Management Technique 256: Insulting By Explaining The Obvious

A really clever way to insult one of your employees, without actually insulting him, is to explain the job in mind numbingly basic terms, repeatedly, even if that person has been doing the work for 20 years.

It's the perfect insult because the target can't complain to anyone, has no grounds for protest, and will sound like a whiner if he does. It's also a great way to take credit for an employee's work, because no matter how good a job he does, it will always be because you told him exactly what to do and how to do it. Remember, it's not about who did the work; it's about who gets the credit.

For instance, you're the chief of surgery, and a young hotshot with steady hands and steely eyes has been taking up a little too much of the hospital newsletter lately. He's about to start an open heart procedure and you scrub in to observe, and to remind him of his place without being boorish about it. You're one with the name on the parking space, not him.

Before he makes the first incision, tell him: "You're going to want to cut the chest open. Make a nice straight incision, then gently cut open the breast bone with the saw."

He'll give you a look as he's cutting, not sure whether to let you know that he does indeed know how to slice people open, that he's been doing it for 10 years now, that he still has $250,000 in school loans because all he ever wanted to do with his life is crack open chests. He doesn't want to be rude to the chief after all.

You should then say, after the chest is open, "You did scrub up well right? Can't take chances of staff infection during a surgery as delicate as this."

What he'll hear is an accusation: "You cut corners. You're lazy. You didn't wash your hands before you plunged them into some poor guys chest. I think you're an idiot."

He'll grow angry, but internalize it, swallowing his rage, feeling more insulted with each carefully chosen suggestion and direction. To the casual observer, your not doing anything but helping, giving advice, providing assurances that a delicate operation goes well.

He'll swallow his anger. His hands will shake. His rage will occasionally flash in his eyes, but you'll be the only one to see it. He'll struggle to think about the 100 things he needs to keep in mind to keep a soul alive, yet all he'll want to do is take his scalpel and ram it into your eye.

After a few weeks of "observing" his surgeries, he'll put in his notice and you'll be the golden boy again, back in your rightful place on the front page of the hospital newsletter. Congratulations.

The Hummingbird

I call my boss The Hummingbird. She's tiny, hyperactive, sleeps four hours a night and lives off of microwave popcorn. She has the attention span of a bird who has slurped the last bit of nectar from a flower and has another thousand flowers to get through before she can get in her SUV and go to yoga class.

Her highest priority is always the idea she had three minutes ago. Everything else must be dropped in order to make real this amazing new idea. Never mind that it will take months, thousands of dollars, careful planning, and delicate coordination with several other departments. She wants it done now and damn it, why didn't we think if it yesterday?

Well, because yesterday there was another burning priority, and the day before that yet another one, and the day before that another super nova idea of business genius, which flamed out as soon as she got to work the next day.

She's painfully bored with any current project ("Isn't that done yet? Can't we get this off our plate so we can get to this new thing?"), and can't tolerate actually executing and completing projects ("I don't care about all the details. Just get it done! I'm tired of hearing about it!").

She loves thinking of and starting projects, and her favorite meetings are brainstorm meetings, where she serves chips and coke and cup cakes like a second grade Valentine's Day party.

"There are no bad ideas in this room," she scolds us when someone mentions that a particular idea might be impractical or impossible without divine assistance.

The problem is that with her, there are no bad ideas outside of that room. If an idea is less than 48 hours old, it's still good, and will perch atop our priority list. Once past its "good idea" expiration date, it will fade away, dead before its time, before it might have come to fruition and actually benefited somebody.

But don't fret about the good ideas withering from inattention. There are plenty of new ideas to think of tomorrow.

All about the white collar warrior

I work for a big, successful corporation with a healthy stock price and no end of evil chaos happening within its glass walls. I am, as so many if us are, a white collar warrior.

As a mid-level manager, a soldier engaged in trench warfare on the front lines of the American economy, I fight for survival everyday. I fight for my company's survival against absolutely brutal competition.

And I fight for my survival, struggling to keep the hellish, soul-sucking job that pays me pretty well, keeps the mortgage up-to-date and the wife supplied with god-knows-what from Home Depot and Pier One.

I battle my bosses, my boss's bosses, the peers in my department, my peers in other departments, contractors, customers, and the poor few who have to answer to me. I have a winning record, for if I didn't I wouldn't be employed. I'd say I win my battles about 60% of the time, which seems to be a solid record in the game of corporate hard ball.

So, what I see this blog as is a way to vent a bit, maybe give myself some perspective by looking at the job with the cold, objective eye of a journalist. And if there are other white collar warriors out there who see something of themselves in my tales of woe, then that's a decent bonus.

It's Sunday night. Tomorrow at 8 a.m., the battle begins again.

First Post

Is this really going to work? Could it be this easy? If so, I'm buying Google stock as soon as I can.