I’m very lucky to have some great friends, who are smart, hard working, and ethical – and at the end of the day, want to keep customers happy while still doing the right thing.
For now, several are in challlenging jobs – where the biggest work challenge of all is both realizing and accepting the enemy is not a competitor, it is within.
I understand their frustration; best captured in this email recently sent to me:
“So, things are not going terribly well at present for the current director of our office.
Apparently, by not listening to requests the client has made and not addressing key issues raised by our client, as well as failiing to deliver on the fundamental value-add principles our organization was supposed to deliver to the client, the client is getting upset and has created a task force to look into the behavior of our organization and determine if requiring a change in leadership is necessary.
While this has been building for months, he’s somehow been oblivious to it and it has only come to his attention this morning – far too late for him to stop the momentum.
Could be an interesting next couple of weeks.
Despite all this, his actions have been showing some questionable priorities and decisions remain baffling.
1. He’s invested in some Ikea office furniture and is thrilled. Thrilled! The desks have glass-tops, but our organization does not have any mouse pads…our guests will look very professional using our their mice on spare cardboard and sheets of paper over their new-ish Ikea desks:
The question of monitors, keyboards, and mice for the present staff remains outstanding and apparently held back by countless layers of red tape (in our 14-person organization, no less)
2. Recently, the director really questioned printing charges for color sales presentation materials (for an imminent global business bid). We recently had to change our copying supplier since we had a dozen color copies of a (now obsolete) thousand-page training manual prepared and bound for us at the local copy shop – which we then did not pick up once the director realized the charges for this were approximately $700.
Now we drive to other areas of the city for business printing needs.
Still, he’s concerned over the charges of printing up & binding 8 color copies of a 40 page document that are part of a bid to earn millions of dollars.
3. The director recently did a presentation about the need for us to do computer backups (apparently it’s our responsibility to do so), but will not provide a portable hard drive, back-up server, USB key, or even a stack of blank DVDs that we could back things up to.
I hope my friend hangs in there; I’m pretty sure the best part of this still developing story is yet to come.
“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”
- Douglas Adams (1952 – 2001), Mostly Harmless
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