Quotations on Teamwork

"Teamwork is knowing your responsibilities so that you can help one another"

"Teamwork is knowing your responsibilities so that you know who to pass the bucket to"
- Dark Manager

"Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results"
- Andrew Carnegie

"Teamwork is the ability to work separately toward a common lie. The ability to misdirect individual accomplishments toward your own objectives. It is the fuel that allows dark managers to attain the perception of uncommon results from common effort"
- Dark Manager

"The best job goes to the person who can get it done without passing the buck or coming back with excuses."
- Napolean Hill

"Why does he even want the job?"
- Dark Manager

Why Dark Manager's Shouldn't mess with a Geek

Hacker Disables More Than 100 Cars Remotely

• By Kevin Poulsen
• March 17, 2010 |
• 1:52 pm |
  

More than 100 drivers in Austin, Texas found their cars disabled or the horns honking out of control, after an intruder ran amok in a web-based vehicle-immobilization system normally used to get the attention of consumers delinquent in their auto payments.

Police with Austin’s High Tech Crime Unit on Wednesday arrested 20-year-old Omar Ramos-Lopez, a former Texas Auto Center employee who was laid off last month, and allegedly sought revenge by bricking the cars sold from the dealership’s four Austin-area lots.

For the rest of the news: here

The Architecture of Fear

I got this from a blog called "time for a pause" and the notion of an "Architecture of Fear" is just so quaint. But not to fret, the author also provides an "Architecture of Abundance" within the same article.

Check it out by clicking on the image

Will Lehmann cause E&Y's downfall...?

The last time an accounting firm was implicated with a major screw up it went belly up, remember Andersen which was swallowed up by E&Y. Now it seems that E&Y have their own dirty customers to deal with.

So who exactly can we trust these days?

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Lehman file rocks Wall Street

By Francesco Guerrera and Henny Sender in New York and Patrick Jenkins in London

Published: March 12 2010 00:41 | Last updated: March 13 2010 00:21

The fallout from the report into the collapse of Lehman Brothers shook Wall Street and London on Friday as US officials grilled banks about off balance-sheet trades and questions were raised over the City’s role in the company’s attempts to cover up its problems.

The 2,200-page report by Anton Valukas, appointed by a US court to probe the reasons for Lehman’s failure in September 2008, paints a damning picture of the bank’s top management, including former chief executive Dick Fuld, three of its chief financial officers and auditors Ernst & Young.

Read the full news here

On Strategy

"Strategy without Tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat" - Sun Tzu

"Action without Glory is the hardest route to being sidelined. Glory without Action is best noiseless when you take credit for other people's work" - The Dark Manager

Hubris & the Carping Cycle

Kubler-Ross in the 1969 book, "On Death and Dying" introduced the concept of "Coping Cycle" when dealing with Grief. Indeed, management turns this model on its head where we could replace Grief with Hubris; and what i'd like to call the "Carping Cycle".

This is essentially what happens when failures happen during the Dark Manager's watch

Stage #1- Denial
The Dark Manager will start of ranting about how well it could have been done. Complaining about how the staff or contractor do not have the skills to manage the situation, and usually ends saying something like "this is a small issue" or "non-issue".

Stage #2- Anger
The situation gets escalated to Audit which now breaths down the manager's neck. He/She then vehemently shows proof that all procedures have been followed and a two bit fresh grad with 1 year experience has no place diving through his documents.

Stage #3- Bargaining
So Audit sends someone of higher seniority, and the issue gets escalated higher up. Which now the Manager justifies that he is after all protecting the company's good name. And that tight datelines need to be met and hence concessions were required . Approval is sought from the upper management for more time to close the gaps.

More often than not the Dark Manager will begin to ignore emails or play hide and seek with the Audit manager with excuses like "Oh, the VP just called me, I have to go..." and since there's at least 12 VPs in the organization, no one really knows who he's talking baout.

Stage #4- Depression
The project crumbles around him, staffs are resigning, and you see him either spending more time in the smoking room sulking or not seeing him at all. We term it as going AWOL but in his terminology - he's just too busy working with international customers that he needs to be on site. He/she begins to swear by Genchi Genbutsu.


Stage #5- Acceptance
Unfortunately, Acceptance never actually happens. The manager pushes ahead anyway and concocts a report that everything is under control with the project. And that it is NOT HIS JOB to fix environmental/situational problems. The often quoted comment is "My job is to deliver the project on time, everything else is irrelevant.

An extremely nifty approach should your organization be filled by other Dark Managers that are too lazy to "prepare" the necessary requirements for the project in the first place.

How to be a Crony by Reading between the Lines

There was this discussion about experiences that vendors go through when they're in the middle of a tender or price negotiations. For the record, I have either NOT encountered any such Dark Managers, or its an art that needs to be honed further.

Apparently, one needs to "infer", the hints thrown across the opposite end of the table and work behind the scenes in fulfilling those needs. For example:-

1. I do not believe that my phone will work well with your solution.
   Emphasis on the work "my", as it really means; if you wanna be my buddy - by all means give me a new phone asap. Especially one that'll work with the solution.
   
   It's not necessarily a phone, but could be anything. For example, I do not think my firewall will be able to work with the solution. If the person is a straight shooter, it's probably true, but more often than not its a lazy manager that's been sitting on an upgrade to an old firewall that's 12 years old and about 200 patches behind.
   
   
2. I'm sorry, my kids are screaming at me for an x-box and I need to go now...
   Perk your ears for any "domestic" complaints, it's actually a problem requiring a solution. In this over simplified scenario, it's an x-box. It could be anywhere from "my girlfriend wants to go to a concert and I can't seem to find the time" to "I think I twisted my back the other day..." which really means, I need a spa weekend massage. Happy ending or not depends on the person.
   
   
3. How many customers have used your product?
   This yells SITE VISIT like a beacon, just jump right through it and get it done and over with. Book your tickets to Thailand, Singapore and South Africa (hint - world cup), Vegas etc. Never mind that the closest demo center is just a 15 minutes drive.
   
   
4. Can you tell me the benefits of this system?
   Book a personal time later to explore what kind of "benefits" tickle the Dark Manager's fancy. Especially when you ask whether he/she requires more private time with the "team" to go through it in detail.


5. How many users can this system support?
   The question above shows doubt, which requires "investments" in terms of a "proof-of-concept" machines. I.e. the operations team requires a loaner as they're facing an IT catastrophe. Oh, be warned though, the loaners tend to go missing or returned to you 2 years later.
   

Once you've fulfill most of the needs, the hints will be more obvious and by then you're pretty much a good friend. Feel free to add-on to the list...