How to Minute your Meetings

I've spoken on Decidophobia or the fear of making decisions and diluting the chain of responsibility. So, the correct ways to minute your meetings are:-

1. Whenever there's a decision, never say Person A requested for clarification or Person B approves. You dilute it by saying; Department A requested for clarification or Committee C approves the recommendation to purchase a 52 inch LCD to display glorious corporate achievements at the reception area.
   
   
2. Always state everyone that's present and not present in the meeting.
   By not being there you can:-
   
   • Deny that you know about the topic at all
     
   • Not have to attend any domestic inquiries when people are questioned on why three 52 inch LCDs were purchased but only 1 was ever used. Naturally, the minutes would have state in minute detail that according to Gartner Group best practices include keeping spares.
     
     
3. Never endorse anything wholesale, always come to a landing with clauses. The committee will endorse proposal for the LCD TV provided that the vendor has 3 years worth of clear credit history, a local owned company as a sub-contractor for servicing and maintenance, an ROI report for its usage and impact analysis on electricity bill.
   
   The inane requests prove that the committee has done its job.
   

My CEO calls it "all the bullshit that's put in place to cover one's ass", which is kinda poetic since an ass is where turd comes from anyway...

ISO/CMMI/ITIL/BPM... WTF!

If you're old enough; you'd probably remember the whole TQM hype popularized by Japan's miraculous recovery post 2 nuclear bombs and WW2. Here's the thing that management sold in the 60s through to the 80s, that Edward Deming was the guru behind their recovery with the adoption of Deming's Quality philosophy~ Plan->Do->Check->Act yada2...

Here's my take -> pure hogwash! The Japanese as a culture have always been perfectionists and they conquered China while Deming was still pushing papers in university. They even booted the Russian during the Russo-Japanese war circa 1904-05.

So why all the hullabaloo on Deming? Simple; cause he's a Whiteman in Asia (See Halo Effect) and you know what they say about the victor stating history as they see fit. Anyway, fast forward a couple more years and TQM turned into the many ISO variations, British Standards, ITIL, CMMI the list goes on. The latest being "Business Process Management" and "Enterprise Architecture"

In a nutshell, you define all the organization's key processes within its value chain in bringing products and services to the customer; tracking the transformation from raw material to valuables. While doing so you measure the performance of these processes and "optimize" it as you find bottlenecks and weaknesses.

Problem is, what typically happens in Asia is this:-

1. A 60 page (Asians write poorly so they try to keep it short) document that does not get updated or "optimized" even if it takes 9 months to replace a notebook for the customer. It's either the vendor's fault or the customer filled the requisition forms incorrectly.
   
   
2. A flow document that has RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) roles defined which does not exist in the organization
   
   
3. Everyone goes into a spree of documentation, the team lead gets promoted; then nobody knows what to do with it next.
   
   
4. Every six months, the head of Governance proclaims that the company has moved from CMMI level 3 to 4 then 5. They have a huge party; but it still takes 9 months to replace the said notebook.
   
   
5. The operations team dream up random numbers to incident reports just to fulfill the process criteria.
   
   
6. Folks get shipped to expensive overseas training on the subject only to be transfered 6 months later cause another department is short of staff.
   

The result of which are fancy websites with process flows and documentation that is as far from reality as the Sales Manager's quarterly predictions. So why do Asian organizations still persist in achieving such certifications?

Simple, cause dark managers are running riot in the company; and there's nothing like process documentations that get thrown at you like it's the Torah. A bureucrats wet dream is to attain ISO certification; and when you have ISO, ITIL and CMMI together; it may as well be an orgy.

p/s: The US Department of Defense Enteprise Architecture Documentation is well over 1,000 pages.

Disappearing creatively

Besides selective amnesia, the mind meld method and taichi, there's the lamest tactic of all - Excuses...

It's typically used by junior dark managers because the "flee mechanism" is still very instinctive. Throughout my working life, I've heard many; but the following are the more creative ones

1. The Father/Mother/Wife/Girlfriend/daughter/son emergency
   There's just so many permutations to go about this, and if you've noticed the rule of thumb; it has to be your most immediate relatives.
   Wife - pregnancy; failure to get pregnant; pregnant but with complications. There's nothing like the notion of an unborn child in distress.
   Father - major illness like cancer, renal failure (something thats protracted where ppl dun die that quickly while being depressing enough)
   Son/Daughter - High fever. Honestly, i think that's really lame, but it somehow works.
   Brother/Sister - loan shark problem. This is really good, cause you come off as a goody big brother/sister role model that your family depends on.
   
   
2. The most recent transmitted decease emergency.
   It used to be SARS, then the Bird flu and the most recent the Swine flu. The cool part about this is the quarantine procedures. You and I know that Human Resources are typically too lazy I mean busy to check whether the person really did either contract the decease or not. Heck, they probably wont even come near you with a 10 feet pole. By virtue of association you get yourself a 5-7 day full salary paid leave, having fun with your PS3 at home.
   
   
3. Emergency Meeting with the VP/President/CEO
   This works as well because no one ever checks where's the head honcho is, let alone bother to ask the secretary of his location. This may even be true, as you could always magically find the time to help the boss synch his blackberry with outlook... something that you've been putting off just for this situation
   
   
4. The family holiday to Australia just came up.
   And guess what, it somehow always come up the week after a major incident where the big presentation to the customer needs to happen. So the chief peon (your no.2 guy needs to do it on your behalf)
   
   There' a slight nuance to excuse 4; if it's the presentation to your boss; you want to do it yourself cause the presenter might blame it on you. But if its to the customer; the unspoken "code of not making your company look like a useless dick that it is infront of your customer" applies. So you're safe!
   

Decidophobia - The Fear of Making Decisions

Checkout the wikipedia entry here: Decidophobia

There's essentially no cure, but a common solution would be a "dilution" of authority via consensus or communal decision making. We tend to call it "The Management Committee"

Berkowitz vs Kowalski

There's just something about Jewish names and court cases. It makes it sound horrendously expensive like some KKR leverage buyout. The same should apply with how Dark Managers name their departments. Lobbing your foreskin doesn't cut it anymore, you gotta have the kippah and curly sideburns to earn the credibility.

Most Dark Managers make the mistake of naming the department as per it's intention. So here's some suggestions to lend a little false sense of grandeur:-

Objective:The lame ass grind of PC Support and answering phone calls from wankers.
Potential Names: Office Automation, End Computing Support
Better: Corporate Computing Services

Objective:The collection of reports that will eventually be fudged to make the ugly look good, and the good look beautiful.
Potential Names: Corporate Governance, Corporate Planning
Better: Corporate Strategic Intelligence

I mean, some rules of thumb apply;

1. If it works out to a 3 letter Acronym that sounds like a grander organization, CSI, FBI, NSA etc then the better it gets.
2. 2 Letter Acronyms are lame
3. 4 Letter ones better sound like a cool misspelled profanity e.g FCUK
4. When all else fails, don't ask an engineer or a geek. They tend to come up with horrendous puns and snicker away at their supposed ingenuity.
5. If you're adventurous enough to invent a nonsense word e.g. Accenture or Avanade; you better have a killer 30 second spiel or be already famous to begin with. (Well; being the Board of Director's nephew works as well)
   

How to handle Dumb and Dumber

A friend asked; what do I do with staffs that are just too dumb to be any good. To be honest, all the training in the world is not going to change him/her because "dumbness" is an attitude; not a skill deficiency.

It's like a sense of initiative or curiosity, it is not a condition or an affliction, but a state of mind. So a Dark Manager will take one of the following options

a) Assign him to the most mind numbing task possible, as typically folks at the shallow end of the IQ spectrum have a high threshold for boredom.
b) Give him a glorious commendation to be transferred to another department.

Either way, out of sight, out of mind.

Seriously though, dark managers love dumb resources because it's the few people in the world that can withstand the dark manager's ingenuity (note: sarcasm).

When you work with stupid people

The hinges to my notebook starts giving way and I mistakenly approached the peons instead of working my way down from the department head. So this is what I got

"According to our record, your notebook will be reaching its leasing maturity period in less than 3 months from now. So, if the current one still can be stretched for this period of time, we will be very grateful for your understanding. Should the notebook fails completely, then we will assist to find you a replacement unit, though it may be a challenge as we do not keep any spares"

Try replacing that email with a doctor patient scenario:-

“I am sorry, but your pacemaker is up for renewal only in 3 months time, we know its faulty now; but hopefully it will last that long… but if it kaputs on you we will try to find a replacement pacemaker… and I hope you understand that it’s really hard to find a replacement when it breakdown too, cause we don’t keep spares… ”

Which brings to mind Carol:-