I need advise from the best of the SD. My boss wants us to create a computer model for something that is well-known to be impossible to model by experts in the field. Instead, it is best to gather empirical data and study the behavior under various conditions. But, that would involve the expenditure of visible costs.
Instead, he’d rather us chase after the illusive (as quickly as possible) and model this behavior by finding the best data we can muster or rules of thumb. In any event, all the best rules of thumb can throw you way off the mark…we’re building nothing but a house of cards!
I fear we are leading ourselves into a false sense of security believing we can do this. Yet, his position is that “we’re engineers, and we can do anything”. (I HATE that thinking for just this reason…a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.)
I’m not the strongest one to debate this, but how do you begin to make someone understand we simply CANNOT model everything that effects the actual results! My best ally was out of town when this came up, and it is hard to speak to him in confidence. By the time he catches wind of this, it may be too late. (He has awesome experience in working with similar RF systems in radar development, etc…all very fickle!)
So, what do I do? In the least, I guess I need to cite references that set limitations to just how far the formulas in the books can be applied. But, how else do you convince your boss NOT to do something?
As a boss myself, I can tell you what I expect of my employees. I want them to do it the way I ask them to, and then, if they have other ideas, show me those too. They can sell me on the others if they think they’re better, but I have to see that they’ve followed the direction I’ve given them first.
Now, I run an ad agency, so obviously doing logos is a lot different from creating computer models. I guess the way the comparison applies is that you could show your boss the time and cost to do it his way and the more efficient way that you’re suggesting.
Don’t tell him his way is impossible, or even a bad idea. But show him that you’ve thought about it and have an alternate solution. And then propose that solution to him.
I’m always open minded when my employees come to me with a problem, but I’m usually much more receptive when they come to me with a solution too.
From a technical perspective, I would ask what his tolerance for error is for the model. Then consult the literature and/or do your own sensitivity calculations to see how sensitive your model would be to various assumptions. How does the robustness of a model you could develop (or others’ earlier attempts) compare to the degree of accuracy he needs?
From an organizational perspective, try to make this part of the “public record” of your organization. Without being obvious about trying to CYA, CYA. Have a meeting, put a Powerpoint together, document the limitations as you see them.
Then if it turns out he’s completely freakin’ nuts and on the way out the door with his lunacy, you’ll have something to fall back on. But once you’ve done that, put your best effort into trying to make it work. Good luck!
If your discipline has refereed journals, there might be the occasional, or more likely frequent bundles of review articles, letters to the editor and other official ramblings that document the futility of what your Pointy-haired Boss (PHB) is demanding.
The trick is in being constructively belligerent in beating PHB about the skull with your cites.
Back in my IT days, we had a common, well known and widely acceptable design practice for this, which was not to be used lightly;
A box in the design flow chart that said: “And then a Miracle happens”
In presentation, you explain as much as possible about every aspect of the project other than this bubble, to ensure that the audience understands that YOU understand every aspect of the project. Then you return to the bubble and explain what is NOT possible to achieve, or the potentially insurmountable difficulties involved, or the unreliability of what they’re asking for.
“I can give you all of this other stuff (pointing to all the other aspects of the project), but this one little area is a concern. How much do you need, how much do you want to spend and how important is the final outcome of this mystery box to you?”
More often than not, faced with the difficulty of achieving “N + X = Magic Ponies”, the customer will come to their senses and ask for something actually achievable, while accepting that you a> understand the project, and b> did your best to give them everything they asked for.
Next time your boss talks about how you engineers can give him the impossible, consider this reply;
“I can give you the improbable, or even the unlikely. If I could give you the impossible, I wouldn’t need to be working for a living.”
Heh. Syndey Harris has a well-known cartoon depicting this, with another person commenting, “I think you should be more explicit here in Step Two.”
Besides, nothing is impossible to model. It’s all a matter of scope/granularity and error tolerance. You can model anything at all on a boolean true/false basis, with an error tolerance of 50%; all you need is a penny. From a cost basis it just gets better, so look on the bright side.
This, along with what other posters have added above. This is the way to approach it if what you are truly expected to do is made that particular solution model to fit what you are trying to achieve.
The other way to think about it: well, what EXACTLY is your boss trying to achieve? What performance needle does he need to move and in what direction and by how much? Just because you currently think that you have to model the impossible, are there other ways to achieve a satisfactory outcome to the situation? Most innovations come from thinking differently about what the desired outcome is and how to achieve it…no one could make the stars and planets move the way they do within purely Newtonian physics - modeling that would be impossible. But approaching it in an Einsteinian way - ah…
So the question is: how can that approach influence the challenge you have here?
I had a boss like yours. I still value his friendship, but I’m damn glad I don’t work for him anymore.
He used to say things like: Once you open the possibility of failure, then failure will creep in! Or: You programmers always say you can’t do it, but in the end you always get it done. (This last was a reference to prototype software built by a man would cut and paste stuff from the web to make it look like it worked. It could *never *have been shipped, but it usually worked well enough to make it through one or two demos.)
I don’t know what to tell you. I know that in the end he got tired of me telling him stuff couldn’t be built and I got tired of telling it to him.
I’ve found brutal honesty works but only when you’re sure. I flatly told a VP that I could not do his project in the timeline he wanted. I may have killed my career but I was right and even with the team he assigned to the project we finished two months later then he wanted me to by myself.
On the other hand if you perform the miracle I sure you’ll get a good bonus or at least published.
I’ve made cost models in the past that tried to take some of the guesswork out of utlizing assets. But as the end-point approached it became impossible to make changes without causing wild swings in the numbers. It was the nature of the business that “crap happens” and when it did it would skew the numbers.
If we could program computers to think we wouldn’t need bosses.
We have similar problems in my line of work where people will ask you for more than can possibly be done in the given amount of time. The solution invariably involves creating more time by working nights and weekends. While this is expected of any salaried employee to some degree, the boss that makes that kind of demand on their employees should be VERY reluctant to do so in my opinion. Your poor planning should not continuously be your employee’s problem. And if your employees have to stay late, you as the boss should too.
The other problem is that then the people decide you are a complainer if you suggest the thing can’t be done because they point out the other times you killed yourself to help them. Or worse, they up the amount of work even more.
Back when I was in pharmaceuticals you were always under pressure to test more drug leads faster. It got to a point where our workload (with no overtime) had everyone working a standard 10 hour day and skipping lunch. Then management wondered why everyone was quitting. Gee, I wonder.
Maybe this is a difference in working in research versus the private sector, but why not? I’ve told everyone I’ve ever worked for that something is impossible or a horrible idea at one time or another, and it’s never been a problem. I suggest alternatives when I can, and I never say something is impossible without a good reason (like, it’s impossible), but why wouldn’t you, as a boss, want to know the truth if your employee has information that you don’t?
A good manager does not try to send work home because he is increasing the odds of losing a well trained employee. Unless the job is something that can be stepped into easily it is a detriment to have to re-establish a new employee. My last job had projects that had to be worked on at home for occasional deadlines or time zone differences but I was given a lot of latitude on my office hours to balance it out.