Bob is trapped in his job, how would you resolve this problem?

In My Humble Opinion
161

So it’s been 3 years… time for an update.

(I’ll stop calling the protagonist ‘Bob’ as it was always obvious it was me)

The situation has declined in some ways, but significantly improved in others…

I’m still in the same job; some of the pressure has eased off a bit, but mostly that was because of additional hard work I put in to deal with root causes, rather than just fighting the fires that my management peers were throwing at me.

There is still the same problem with my own line management not having any working concept of capacity management or prioritisation, and therefore saying stupid things like “No, all 14 of these projects are very important! Get them all done!”.
Most of that comes from one character, but he’s the MD, and he’s my direct line manager. he’s supposed to be retiring soon, but ‘soon’ is a sort of perpetually extending window.

in more positive news, I have more recently managed to actually use my annual leave - mostly by booking flights to make it harder to argue that I should just cancel or postpone my arrangements. They still tried to coerce me, but in the end, I just said “Look, I’m walking out of that door on Friday at 5, If you decide that means I can’t come back, I’m still walking out of that door”. The crisis turned out not to be so urgent after I said that.

Also, and most significantly, my YouTube channel (Atomic Shrimp) has experienced significant growth and looks like it could turn into a full time income quite soon.
I actually just paid off my mortgage today (using YouTube revenue), and that mortgage was the key financial commitment that was making me feel reluctant to do anything that might risk me losing my job. If I lose my primary income now, I still have a roof over my head. I own it.
That alone is like a huge pressure valve - I know now I can quit if I need to, and just take up a part time or lower pressure job in order to pay a few bills.

And interestingly, that sudden release of pressure makes it a more interesting idea to stick around in this job for a while, and see what happens. Funny how things work out…

162

The other thing to mention is that in the past 3 years, I applied for, and was interviewed for, 5 or 6 promising-looking jobs, but at later stages of the interview process, they all turned out to be the fire in this particular frying-pan drama.

It’s interesting, and I think that surviving 5 years in this warzone has allowed me to develop some unique insights into How Not To Do Stuff - and I was looking forward to the idea of starting afresh in a broadly similar situation (i.e. a company where technical debt needs to be properly turned around).

I attended an interview at a company where there was a small IT team whose day job consisted of just fighting random fires and doing things that should really be end-user jobs - the previous IT head had just walked away, there was significant technical debt, a huge list of urgent projects, serious risk to be managed, lots of stuff to be fixed etc.
I was asked to present a plan for my first 90 days in charge - I went in strong with a plan that was basically:
[LIST=“1”]
[li]Assemble a list of all of the things that needed doing, fixing, delivering[/li][li]Assess and score all of those things based on risk/impact to the business[/li][li]Create a prioritised, budgeted plan based on above scoring - plan to do the things that matter most, soonest.[/li][li]Obtain unanimous, board-level mandate to run the plan[/li][li]Run the plan, deliver the agreed outcomes. Don’t deviate from the plan. Don’t do anything else (new) outside of the plan without a board-level review/change to the plan[/li][/LIST]

I had presented the outline of this proposal, and I started on the detail and outcomes, when one of the interviewers (a board member) interrupted to say “You see our Operations Director prefers to run projects completely by himself, then hand them off to IT at some point midway through the project”

[short period of contemplative silence]

Me: “Do you think that’s why you’re in the situation you’re currently in?”
Them: “Oh yes, definitely”
Me: “If you desire an improvement to the situation, that has to change - that’s why I included the point about board unanimity of the plan, and no deviation from, or addition to the plan…”
Them: “Yes, but he probably won’t want to work that way”
Me: “Does he like the outcomes he is currently getting from working that way?”
Them: “Oh no, in fact, he’s very unhappy with the way projects always turn out”
Me: “So in summary, you want a different set of outcomes, without changing anything?”
Them: “We just need someone who will just make it work, without upsetting the way it works”
Me: “Well, it looks like we’re about done here…”

Basically, they wanted someone who would soak up the blame and complaint for problems they didn’t want to stop creating. Do it the wrong way, harder. I already have a job like that, thanks.

4 of the roles I applied for were (at second interview) revealed to be boring variations on this theme. Weird.

163

Huh, I always figured Bob’s your uncle.

Congrats on all your success. :slight_smile:

164

Congrats on the YouTube success, and paying off your mortgage. And also for the change in attitude as a result. You can’t bluff a man who isn’t listening.

Gee, where have I heard this kind of thing before? Oh yes, I remember - at every meeting of every failed project I have ever been on.

Regards,
Shodan

165

Wow, I’m amazed it’s been over three years since this OP, I thought it was between 1 and 2 years ago. I’ve thought about it a few times since and I love it when this sort of thread gets bumped with an update. Great to see an improvement in the situation. And thanks for the insight into How Not To Do Stuff. I’ve been lucky to have always been blessed with good management so far in my career, so I find it astonishing that this level of incompetence is apparently so pervasive among people who you would expect to know better.

166

Regarding point 4, has Bob actually tried to have a conversation with his superiors about adding resources to his team? Whether it’s people or better tools or whatever? If not, start there.

If so, and the reply has been “no,” and if Bob feels he’s a valuable enough employee to get away with this, let one or two small things fall through the cracks to help prove the point.

167

Kind of. I did succeed in outsourcing some important technical support; there was originally a completely unchallenged notion that a 3 person team could provide 24x7 support cover for the entire IT infrastructure of a medium sized business.

For example there was this ongoing assumption by everyone (except me) that maintaining servers, administering mail services, configuring networks, etc were all just ‘stuff that IT people can do’ - no recognition that if you want it done properly at SME scale, you have to use certified professionals

So after that kept on not working, and we had a few whole days of business downtime, I managed to win the argument that we needed proper support escalation. After a few times where things went wrong in the middle of the night or the weekend, and nobody answered the phone, I was asked to create a ‘24x7 support rota’. I pointed out that it is mathematically impossible for me to do this with a 3 person team, without breaking the law.

So I outsourced all of the infrastructure maintenance and support escalation to a company that includes a 24x7 service desk in the offering. Things started to get better.

However, there is still a weird failure to understand capacity management here, and a weird reluctance to ever say that any project is anything lesser than top priority. I have a weekly steering group meeting where I point at a list of (currently) about 20 projects and ask “So which of these is the highest priority?” and the only answer I ever get is “Well, they all are, really”.
It’s insane, but I don’t think I can fix it - so care about that a bit less than I used to.

168

On that last point, I assume you’ve tried applying the restaurant-choosing method? By which I mean, groups of people two upwards (in fact, perhaps married couples especially) often have difficulty deciding where to eat. For example:

A: So what do you fancy to eat?
B: Oh, I don’t mind.
A: Nor do I really - you choose.
B: No, I chose last time, you make a decision.
A: Well, I really don’t mind.

Etc. This is unhelpful and unproductive. An improved method is one party suggesting an option, and if the other dislikes it, they are then obliged to propose an alternative of their own.

Applying this to the steering group meeting, you start by saying: “This week, we’re focusing on project X for the most part; Thursday is dedicated to project Y exclusively; project Z will be worked on if we have time, everything else will have to wait until next week.”. Inevitable someone will be unhappy with this, but if so they either have to put up with it, or propose an alternative. And if someone else is unhappy with that, then you iterate again until you have agreement, however grudging. But I feel I’m teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, here. Or maybe it would result in the meeting taking all week.

169

Yeah, we’ve tried a lot of things. The problem is, all 20 of the projects really are equally important now they are all at a middle - we just shouldn’t have started some of them until later.

Honestly, there are so many things wrong with this place, it’s like a bad sitcom; we have a wishlist system where people can propose projects, and the idea is that we will select the best of those and run them, but anytime anyone doesn’t get their project selected, they escalate via a variety of management/board channels and then someone comes along and tells the project team “just this one more” - but ‘just one more’ happens every day, and so we’re completely choked with demand.

But like I say, I feel kind of detached from this right now, which is nice.

170

The only thing I have done with this kind of answer that helped, and it didn’t help all that much, is to tell - not ask, tell - that your three top priorities are going to be A, B, and C. When somebody says “project H needs to be addressed!” you say “ok, that’s my third priority, and C will have to go on hold until the higher priority work is done”.

“But can’t you just add H to the list?”

“No, not without more resources.”

“But we don’t have any more resources!”

“Then it won’t get done.”

If all 20 are equally important, then the ones that shouldn’t have been started go on hold.

Before I worked in IT, I didn’t know that Dilbert was a documentary.

Regards,
Shodan

171

Oh this is excellent news all round. Atomic Shrimp is one of the best channels out there, and I’m glad that your excellent work on it is bringing you the reward you deserve.

And I agree on the mortgage thing - I paid mine off via very generous redundancy package, and the weight just lifted from my shoulders. I now do a job that, while it isn’t particularly lucrative, is (I hope) actually genuinely socially useful. Cue a much happier and healthier me as a side effect.

172

I don’t disagree with any of these principles, but in my experience, they only work when there is respect for them at a high level.
The problem I face is that the higher-ups are the ones overriding the rules - there is literally nobody to appeal to - in particular, when I recently tried exactly what you’re talking about - that is “OK, if we’re doing H, we’re not doing C”, the response (from the MD, who is the highest authority in the business, and is my direct line manager), was actual angry shouting “Just get it done”.

In a conversation where I once tried to point out that resource demand was about 250% of capacity, he just said “That’s ridiculous - it can’t be more than 100% - it’s mathematically impossible!”. I work for an actual madman.

But it’s OK

173

You might be interested in listening to CGP Grey talking with Brady Haran (numberphile) on their podcast Hello Internet. Grey has talked about the pressure of regularly cr eating content that people will like and doing this as his sole support.

One of these days I’ll collect stinging nettles and make the soup that you demonstrated. :slight_smile:

174

The frightening thing is that he is correct - it is mathematically impossible. But I don’t think it would help to explain that to him.

I was once notified in late February of a project I was supposed to finish by December 30. Of the *previous *year. It didn’t help to explain that time travel was difficult to code for, and I was not able to type faster than light.

I think your improved attitude is the best approach you can take, especially with Atomic Shrimp going well. When I get a chance I will check it out.

Regards,
Shodan

175

I think the problem is summarised by two factors:

1: There are a lot of small-to-medium sized businesses in the UK that grew out of ‘family’ companies - where the culture started off with a small number of multi-skilled individuals, being driven directly by owner-manager-directors who were involved in the small detail of everything. As these companies grow, they don’t change their culture or structure, so they become medium-sized companies where the owner-director is still tinkering with the detail, and is still trying to act as though directly managing a now-quite-large number of staff.

  1. Such companies require more complex and robust infrastructure as they grow - they typically start off with the IT requirements being managed as a side concern for one guy who happens to know a bit; then they take on one ‘IT guy’ and expect him to do everything and anything, then they outgrow the scale where that still works - they are actually at the bottom end of the ‘enterprise’ scale, with none of the budget, skills, culture or expectation that properly fits enterprise-scale IT; they expect to just be doing the same kind of things as they always did, only a little bit more of it.

I reckon a lot of small businesses just never make the transition, because they can’t accept or understand that it requires more than a simple increase of the same activities.

So in the middle of all this is: people in my particular role - trying to be a very broadly-skilled IT generalist manager, but at the same time as knowing we can’t just ‘do more’ or ‘do it better’ - we have to embrace significant change.
Job openings that exist for me will tend to be those where someone else gave up trying to convince their company of the need for that significant change.

The solution is (I think): get out of this game; I could actually step down to a lower paid, less-general role in a bigger company that is already on the Enterprise footing.

176

So how long have you and Bob been friends? :smiley: