Some gems of ‘great’ management gathered from friends and personal experiences:
- “Why do you need to elaborate so much on this email? You are wasting time. Just attach the entire exchange, write ‘please advise.’ and let those guys go and read find out for themselves what needs to be done.”
The sad part is most of the time you either don’t hear a reply from the other party, or they will still write back to ask for clarification. So might as well have done it in the beginning, right? And, summarizing the matter makes it easier for the other party to pick it up too. It saves them the time of having to go through the entire exchange to figure out what’s going on. In fact, to just dump it on them is counterproductive and a wasteful duplicaiton of work which is already done. Don’t agree? Then ask yourself why should you try and figure out what I have already understood all over again.
- “Just shoot the email to those guys. The idea is to have the email trail to prove that you have taken action. Whether those guys read or take action or not doesn’t matter. If you are taken to task then just take it to the level above them.”
Sure. Then do it yourself because it’s a vicious cycle. If all you do is forwrd the previous email exchanges with just a ‘please advise.’, ‘fya’ or a blank mail without any meaningful comments, is it a wonder why the other side don’t even bother? Imagine someone taking a whole bunch of files and dump it on your table, and then just walked away without saying something helpful. It’s just plain rude. Also, taking the matter to their immediate superiors may galvanise them into the much desired quick response, but it is more likely that the other party will after that be even more reluctant to act timely on the next request.
- “It’s very easy to deal with your clients. All you need to do your job well then they cannot touch you.”
This came from someone who will find all excuses not to show up before the clients and will only do so after he couldn’t find any unfortunate scapegoat to do so. It’s damned easy to say without leading by example. Oh puh-leaze, wanna bluff the ghost to eat tofu also be more tactful, alright?
- “A leader do not need to be hands on. Just tell your guys to do. Your job is not to show them how to do it. Just tell them to do it.”
Reminds me of a hypothetical armoured unit CO that says this over the air: ‘All units Alpha Battalion, ATTACK! ATTACK!! ATTACK!!’ and when done, said this to the driver of his own tank: ‘Driver, REVERSE!’. Right.
- “Do you know a lot of clients complained to me about you and I have to say good things to cover up for you? You should have done these tasks first. Don’t ask me about the nature of the complaints. Just do these for me, geddit? What? Not assigned to you before? You just do this first. Your own tasks can do later.”
Duh! So, how the poor staff got complained and needs to cover up when he wasn’t even assigned the tasks in the first place? And getting into such a situation like this means ultimately the staff will get complained because he can’t produce what he has promised to his other clients.
- “I will escalate it to our regional and global support teams.”
While escalating matters do sometimes get things solved quickly, escalating without first consulting one’s own team the real situation creates problems on its own. Firstly, it makes your own team looks incompetent. If everything needs to be solved by those guys without any effort on the local team’s part, then the local team is redundant. It is good to have redundancy, but it is bad to be redundant. Get the idea?
Secondly, if it is not an issue related to the regional and global suppor teams, too many such unnecessary escalations gives a ‘crying wolf’ impression and no one takes you seriously in the future. Get a grip man. It’s not so serious that it needs escalation unless the customer threatens to have you burnt on a stake!! And the team will give you a tinker if the matter really requires escalation.
* SIGH * With a management like this, who still needs enemies?
Feel free to email me with your own experiences. But please, don’t send me self-glorifying bullshit about your long suffering and how important and nice you are for doing something for your stupid boss, alright?