The Dark Manager Mind Meld

Ever want anything to be approved by the CEO without him approving it? Read on.

There's this situation where a presentation for investment required a decision from the boss, but it lacked crucial information. Behind the scenes however its highly important that this project goes on due to motives only known by the PM, so here goes.

Steps to mind meld
1) Casually chat up the boss on the topic, share with him the facts. It doesn't really matter that there will be no decision coming out of it.

2) Write an email to boss but cc. the rest of the approving bodies in the review board of such "discussion". Use words like "base on the discussion...". Note that "the" is indeterminate, and because there's folks in the cc, they'd figure that a decision was actually made by the boss. And when boss reads it, he thinks that the rest of the approving body has concurred.

3) Let the situation cool itself down, at least two weeks. The boss is typically so busy that he'll forget about the email anyway.

4) Present the case to another dept; in particular Procurement and cite that "the ceo" and Approving body has given the approval base on the email.

True enough, its probably not strong cause it requires the CEO's reply, but if you play your cards right, and phrase it convincing enough. The rest of the panel may just approve the activity.

If you're ever caught and got hauled into the CEO's office, insist that the CEO did approve from the conversation, and you wrote the email to him to confirm. Pretend that you're angered at his forgetfulness... and negotiate your case again.

But now with more facts on why the project is important. Sneakiest (Dumbest) trick i've ever seen...

Why it's successful?
-> You get precious air time from the boss...

The Halo Effect

If you're Caucasian, try working in Asia, folks will look at you like you're the personification of Zeus himself. Not that they know who's Zeus anyway, but you know what I mean.

The 80s have pretty much brainwashed Asians into believing that any mustached American is Magnum P.I. and any white haired older gentleman as John Hannibal Smith from the A-Team.

The 60s and 70s were worst, older Asians think of you as either the six million dollar man, Bruce Banner (if you're smart) or Vic Morrow playing Sergeant Saunders in Combat.

Where as those who remembers the 40s and 50s grew up as secretaries or drivers to white westerners holding positions as regional or banking officers. Needless to say, they carry a position of immense power. Well; relative to the Asian, but for all you know he was probably shipped to the West Indies for being caught shagging the Duke's daughter.
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The Halo effect, more importantly, persona and the voice of Power by virtue of an accent still affects deeply the psyche of a plain Asian. So here's how you take advantage of it:-

• Always bring a westerner along to any meeting where a Top Asian needs to make decision from a proposal. All the westerner needs to say is "I propose such and such..." and it typically gets endorsed. Never mind that the proposal has been submitted 3x previously.
  
• For better effect, bring an older Westerner, who's taller than 5 Eleven, the taller the better.
• For more impact, throw in an obscure accent. Well; in any case, American and British accents are getting all too common. The flavour of the month is either Australian or European for general IT.
• Afrikaan will do as well. Especially after the movie Blood Diamond and oddly enough in the Supply Chain and logistics line.
  
• Scottish and Irish accents works well in Shipping and Oil Drilling business.
• American works best in consulting
• British for insulting
• German for Enterprise Resource Planning systems (specific field in IT)
  
• Russian, if you need to display statistical numbers. (even if it's just a mean or common Arithmetic) -> Fyi, Most Dark Managers can't count...
  
• Finally, nothing beats a hot looking full chested tall blond wearing a shirt (jacket optional). There's just something about shirt buttons and wholesome mammary glands.
  

Dark Managers don't want to know the Problem

Logic states that if you know the problem its a good start for you to figure out the solution. Unfortunately, dark manager's want the solution immediately.

My personal pet peeve is when any attempts in explaining the root cause is often interrupted with a stern...

"I don't care, I want the solution!"

Which the subordinate will immediately reply,

"I'm sorry, but we don't have one"

In which the Dark Manager will ask, "Why..?"

and the routine rotates itself ad infinitum because he/she will just interrupt the engineer anyway... this chicken an egg solution is further exacerbated when the Dark Manager pops up behind the engineer every 5 mins, and yells...

"What's the problem? Is the server up yet!?"

Q&A: Have you met a Racist Bastard Dark Manager?

Asked Fred from San Francisco, well Fred; from where I've been, I haven't met any racist bastards, only bastard managers.

Race, is a tool for control, it allows the Dark Manager to create a "we" and "them" scenario. Its essentially like sports where we take sides. One minute we're friends, another, we're mauling at each other because we're on the other side of the field.

It also allows the creation of an "inner circle" for the Dark Manager

Short Term Dark Management

IMHO, short haul employment is pretty much 1-2 years. Within this period, the goal for success is in framing yourself for your next employer. With Dark Management principles deeply rooted, you need to succeed by all means possible, and time it such that you can leave the organization without too much collateral damage. Both to your reputation and the people that you interact with.

Sweep any unfinished tasks under the carpet
Someone else will inherit your problem anyway, so don’t fret.

Focus on the main goals, if your task is to deploy 10,000 users with SAP, then just focus on that. It does not matter that the users are screaming foul on the lack of training and change management. What you need to do is just concentrate on your key stakeholders as explained in “Managing Up while Shitting Down”.

Because the majority of managers are dark by nature, most of the peons will not have access let alone gripe to the CEO. What’s more, middle management has been forced fed to dilute all reports when addressing up anyway. For example:-

Truth: 9 out of 10 users, do not know how to use SAP upon deployment.
Report: We are 1 month away to complete user training (preferably a date where you’ve already left the company)

Truth: There’s 5,000 incidents and growing on system bugs.
Report: There are 5,000 “requests” due to enthusiastic users working on the new systems.

Truth: The Version Control system lies under the table of one developer and the power supply get’s dislodged periodically by his restless feet.
Report: we have a top notch version control system with Disaster Recovery built in.

Truth: We have a Sharepoint 2000 environment with 90% of all enterprise applications and another Sharepoint 2007.
Report: we have a Sharepoint 2007 farm and it'll be real easy for us to migrate to Sharepoint 2010

Here’s the kicker; nobody wants to report bad news because somehow, Dark Managers label bad news bearer as “whiners” (see Whiner Wanker), and your opponents won't be able to move the news upwards. True, your peers will bitch among themselves, but they won't have the gumption to do anything more than that.

Target one major project that allows you to work with a major Vendor.
In this example, SAP; ensure that the SAP Project Director is well managed. A lot of Dark Managers make the mistake of squeezing the vendors because they want to divert blame to another party; leaving the vendors to hang on most project blunders. But for the short term- that’s a huge foobar!

Your goal is to pucker up and smooch your way up the SAP hierarchy and make one heck of an impression to their brass. If you've done it right, you will be hired once the project ends.

With a short term employment approach, you need to shift all blame to “God” or the “User”.

Vet through & Re-word Risk Management documents.
To shift the blame to God, Risk Management documents have to be as vague as possible. Where the situation is something that cannot be mitigated unless management spends 3x more money compared to the project at hand. When the documents are endorsed by the Risk Committee, roughly verbalize the actual risks but never put it down in writing. That way, the Risk Management Community will be absolved of their duties when risks becomes issues. Everyone will exclaim ignorance but Governance would have captured that "due process" has been adhered to and no one needs to be blamed.

When magic hour happens, your risk document will be endorsed regardless.

Magic Hour
This item deserves a blog entry of its own. So I’ll summarize it as the act of ignoring all risks and in order for the project to kick off ASAP. This happens when the board of directors or Chairman requests for a USD100mil system with 20,000 man days worth of effort, developed by Q4 and today’s the first working day after Q2. Typically the commitment will be agreed upon by the CEO because they're born and bred wankers... especially CEO's that works for organization that they do not form and own)

You get to be cruel to your peers
Principally; through the act of back stabbing your peers via the Vendors to the CEO. You’ll gain even more brownie points when you slam your own peers for works that directly impact the status of the project in front of the vendor. This requires timing and orchestration of meetings.

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So, here’s the best part about the Short haul approach to Dark Management success. The vendors will actually value you as a consummate executor. It’s one of the most devious ways to climb up the corporate ladder. Use it when you're in a small organization where losers abound with no hope of moving out. It works well when there's a ton of Dark Managers working for the long haul (more on this later)

Unfortunately, once you’re at the top, it’s hard to maintain that position because you won’t have many supporters that you can depend on.

That’s where you need to employ Advanced Dark Management skills… another lesson, another day.

Selecting Projects - Big and Bad Ass

There’s a number of ways to padding up your resume as a Dark Manager. The easiest is from the projects that you've ran; and strategic selection of these projects is an art in itself.

By strategic; your goal is to wring the most amount of money from upper management or your customer before you would even accept it. For example, if it’s a Document Management System, your first task is to justify several million dollars worth of hardware include Information Lifecycle Management tools from EMC and Hierarchical Storage Management add-ons.

It’s all about injecting fear into the stakeholders, and projecting "what if" scenarios that culminates into the birth of the Anti-Christ.

Anyway, here are several things that I stay away from with a 10 feet pole.

Do something for free.
Free means you, absorbing all the risks and the customer as well as management gaining all the benefits. It’s true that you’ll gain brownie points but it creates precedence, and more work will come your way.

Ask the team to research for freeware or Linux, Apache PHP based applications
This directly translates to a resume that says USD5,000.00 on a project sheet when instead it could have been worth USD5mil. Remember, it’s all about image and pretence. It does not matter that all the money is on hardware but the fact is, you ran it.

Tai Chi away easy big value Projects
There’s nothing like a sweet multimillion dollar projects that’ll make you look good – on paper. It doesn’t matter whether it becomes a white elephant; the fact is, you ran it. I know it’s the opposite of what I’ve been saying about ‘Tai Chi’ing away projects, the trick is, to take on projects if you’re in it for the short run, but to move away from it you’re on for the long haul.

In summary, you'd want to take on easy projects that could have been done over the weekend, and blow it up into a 7 or 8 digit figure assignment - cool huh! :)

The Female Dark Manager

Some may find this sexist, but Dark Management knows not gender and the explanations provided can be used for either sexes; however, the Serengeti of Management is vast and once in a many moons arise female Dark Managers that stand out like a beacon in the savanna.

Bred by years of mongrel bitchiness the female dark manager exudes acrid egomaniacal obsession with control. Power is used to its absolute and no one may stand in the dark queen’s way.

Melodramatic...; absolutely, because melodrama is her middle name. The following are the prerequisite to being a female dark manager.

Use emotions and voice control to the fullest
There’s nothing like a loud voice to quell all manner of dissension. Shout and scream if you must. Remember to be wide eyed and flail about for emphasis.

Never allow anyone to cut you off or finish your sentences
Strike them down where they stand.

Cut everyone off, especially if their explanations get windy and wordy
You know, the type that asks a second question before you could finish with the answer...

Focus, focus focus – On 'your' train of thought.
Never allow the person to verve away from your topic of questioning, bring them back, raise your voice if you must but bring them back. Make them see what you see.

Accuse, Abuse & Refuse
Upon assessing the facts shrewdly, jump immediately into acrid accusations. Abuse their emotions, put them off their track and rightfully refuse any appeals and justifications. You are always right!

Logic is your best friend
Train very well on this, as it takes a sharp mind use this technique.
A perfect example of a female dark manager character trait -> Judge Judy :-