Probably, yeah. Sounds to me like he needs another job. He might have talents that are useful in the company, or he might need to go elsewhere.
I truly, truly sympathize with you. I had a person like this as my BOSS for eight years, and there’s no changing them, really.
New York blanket party.
My way of dealing with people like this is usually to take lots and lots of their money away from them.
As for dealing with a fool who isn’t a client, I have to go with the others and say document his every screw-up until he hangs himself.
Software development exec here, going through the same “small shop learning to think / work like a big shop” transition. Painful, especially with the few long-time but clueless employees who grew up with the company. But that’s another story.
If you are in charge of his work, then you are in charge of defining what constitutes acceptable performance of that work.
A backup solution is NOT acceptable in my department unless we have fewer than 1 failure per 20 runs.
Tell him that if he can’t make that happen within, say, 40 days, you’ll find somebody who can. It’s simple, measurable, and achievable. Put the work standard in writing. Document the daily outcome. Fire him when he fails.
If you don’t in fact control him directly, but you depend on his services, you can still get to the same place once you convince the higher-ups that you need X quality service from the other dept that he does work for.
A rigid as it sounds, even in IT & to some degree development we can write objective work standards and drive people to them. Better to lead them towards doing good work through mentoring and training, but for folks in about 10% over their head, the only solution I’ve found is to objectively document the failures & prepare for the dismissal when they prove unable/unwilling to change.
You know, backups are actually a Big Deal. If they weren’t, nobody would make them and there wouldn’t be high-priced software dedicated to making sure they go smoothly and can be restored smoothly. If this guy is making backups a bigger hassle than they need to be, he either is costing the company money or is going to sooner rather than later.
Maybe someone higher up the ladder will actually listen to that line of reasoning. I don’t know.
LSLGuy’s solution is probably better.
We’re bored. Can we burn the witch now? Please?
Carrot and stick, with liberal use of stick, now.
Since he doesn’t “get” the mentoring–he probably has a big enough ego where he thinks that it’s YOU who are not getting what he is saying–you need a bigger gun. Here is the procedure for assessing back up glitches; you need to run X, y, and z to trouble shoot. If those don’t work, you need to go over the (whatever it is) step by step, line by line or whatever. We want a goal of X number of glitches per Y number of back ups–and if this quota is not met, we will find someone who can work with this system.
what else can you do? I am all for educating and empowering staff, but sometimes they need a kick in the fanny. You tried the “let’s all work together” schpiel and he ain’t buying. Time for a bit of personal motivation.
Muffin I think it’s more that he’s stubborn and set in his ways, than that he requires firing (unfortunately)
Lynn Yeah, he’ll outlast me, here. That’s for sure. I’m going to deliver on globalization, and move on. He cut his teeth in IT on the job here, and I think it’s the only professional job he’s ever had. And I get the sense he’s got a deeply-ingrained working-class/blue collar mentality of sticking with a job, and going down with the ship if necessary. Plus, he’s well-liked here, and our boss thinks a lot of him. I should mention our boss also recognizes he’s “thick-headed”.
gatopescado …or cement shoes.
Sublight Yeah. I think I’m expected to ‘fix’ him. In other words: his failures to live up to my expectations are my failures in not finding a way to make him do what I need him to do.
LSLGuy Indeed. I’m spending some time today putting together some goals to shoot for, streamlining the jobs, eliminating errors. Basically, I’m fixing things myself, and I guess I’ll leave him ‘in charge’. No skin off my nose, as long as things work. Further muddying the waters is SOX auditing, and multiple parellel projects that impact data warehousing/storage, and backups. Ugh.
But, yeah, I’m putting together standards, I’ll work up a template for reporting, and I’m going to gather doc. on common failure messages and resolutions. I should make him do it, though.
Derleth Believe me, I know. I’m pretty seasoned in this business, and I definitely don’t sweat the small stuff. Backups are very prominent on my radar.
mks57 Yes, yes. Go ahead.
I’ve spoken to both my boss and the other sr guy here. Both concur: the guy’s thick-headed, stubborn, and mostly ignorant. But, if you give him something to do, and map out how to do it, he’ll get it done. Plus, he knows where all the bodies are buried. That always helps.
With fava beans and a nice chianti fff fff fff
Well, not gladly, I’ll tell ya that!
Man, this guy sounds like half the people I work with. I’m a business analyst in an HR dept, dealing primarily with an SAP system. When they bought SAP 5 years ago, some consultant told them it would be a good idea to hire administrative assistants from HR to be functional (systems) analysts. The majority of these folks simply do not have an analytical mindset, and there’s really very little that can be done to change that. You need to replace him with someone who enjoys solving problems. The impact on our org has been millions of dollars wasted on poorly conceived solutions, and a client community that hates the system and the IT dept.
Failing that, there are courses on problem solving / analytical thinking that you could send him on.