The Bucket Of Water Thing. December 1, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Business Etiquette, Last Job , Comments
The humble bucket of water is a simple way to gain work/life perspective.
- Fill up a bucket, with water.
- Put your hand in it.
Move it all about if you life
Notice the waves? - Now take your hand out.
You’ll notice the water has settled.
So what actual difference have you made to that bucket of water.
NOT. A. THING.
If you’re working for a large organisation, you’re doing the bucket of water thing.
On corporate speak November 5, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Customer Relations, Last Job , Comments
I was a new employee trainer for 4 years, which means I could talk about my employers strategic direction and Customer Intimacy programs.
Customer Intimate? I used to bristle at that. Customer care, yes! But I don’t want to be intimate with them.
Towards the end of my tenure, we had a Sailing To Success, and then a Sailing With Success customer culture group think program.
We’re all on the good ship SS Customer Intimacy. We’re negotiating the rocks (our obstacles to success), and sailing past the buoys (our progress). We’re racing against the pirates (our competitors) to reach the booty.
- New Employee Induction Program.
I’m glad I’m not part of that anymore.
Some people only “get it” with pictures … October 29, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Last Job, Stories , Comments
And some are so pig-ignorant that even a photo doesn’t help.
Had to write up training material for a SMS 2003 support session I was presenting. You can see the amount of material I had to review in the photo.
And the pointy-haired female manager still wondered why it would take a while to review.
This week’s work challenge? - Project Managers! October 15, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Last Job, Leadership, Project Management , Comments
Project Managers are those people who “”manage”" projects.
Sort of like a “stay at home” mum who organises her children’s day. Except the mum is competent, and the project manager isn’t.
Competency is an interesting sideline in itself. If someone isn’t competent, does that automatically mean that they are incompetent?
Actually no. In “training speak”, they are not yet competent. Sort of like how “deferred success” is the new phrase for “failure”.
Where was I?
Ah Project Managers! I’m working with/guiding four of them at the moment.
The competency ranges from: “oh my gawd, how do you manage to tie your shoes laces?” to “able to form five-word sentences in a single bound”.
The projects being managed are all doing the same thing for different customers, so it will be interesting to see which of the biggest losers will succeed. I’m tipping the cute (female) project manager, as she has nouse.
We trained very hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing–it can be a wonderful method of creating the illusion of progress while creating confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation.
Actually that fellow should work where I do. Two phrases which stop most work requests before they hatch?
“That’s not part of my job description”
and if that fails
“Do you have an expense code for me to charge my work against?”
It’s been that kinda week. Playing a piano in a brothel would be more honest work.
You’ve outsourced the helpdesk WHERE? August 25, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Last Job, Stories , Comments
Like many companies, my former employer offshored their Intranet helpdesk to India. First I knew of this was when I received an email
We’ve reset your password to abcd1234, and we’ll now close your Help Desk ticket
"WHAT HELP DESK TICKET!?!?!", I exclaimed to myself.
So I ring the Help Desk
CSC India, how can I be helping you?
"You’ve reset the wrong user account". A point which took 15 minutes to sink in with the bone headed Help Desk jockey. My password was finally reset but it took the best part of the day before I could log in (password had to replicate around the world).
Perhaps it was a coincidence, but a few days later, the Intranet logon page had a new option "I’ve forgotten my password", which eliminates the need to ever speak to the Help Desk ever again.
The morals of the story are:
- Offshoring your helpdesk because it’s cheaper and "everyone’s doing it" should not be your primarily motivation.
- The ability of users to fix their own problems ("I’ve forgotten my password") is a good idea.
- If your Help Desk offer such crummy service internally, what will your external customers think of them?
Benefits of Six Sigma August 13, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Last Job , Comments
They say that Six Sigma was created by a Motorola engineer, who ended up dying in the company cafeteria.
It’s all about cost-cutting. Sure, there are other benefits such as:
- Cost reduction (duh!)
- Culture charge
- Customer retention
- Cycle-time reduction
- Defect reduction
- Market-share growth
- Product/service development
- Productivity improvements
Now I think Six Sigma can work for you, but the two things I personally don’t like about it?
- takes too long to run a Six Sigma project.
- Six Sigma practitioners are known as "Belts", as in "I’m a Six Sigma Master Black Belt".
Yes, you do get a martial arts belt.
All too much wankery for me.
Three More Years of Outsource Avoidance… July 25, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Funny Pictures, Humour, Last Job , Comments
Worked for a company rather like this. For Financial Year 2008, the goal was to off-shore to India, 40% of operations staff. We lost a lot of good people, and not just good at their jobs, good people as well.
The comic is from the popular Non Sequitur comic by Wiley Miller
And not a word of thanks - on re’orgs July 22, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Business Etiquette, Last Job , Comments
There was a team of folks who worked near by. They performed Second Level support type work for a large mining customer, and they (the team) were based in Melbourne.
Then, one day, a re-org occurred, and their jobs were shifted to Sydney.
The team members were told that they had to find other jobs or be made redundant. I suspect the move to consolidate jobs into Sydney was a bit of empire building on behalf of one manager.
The biggest complaint the team had about it all was the lack of “thanks for doing a great job”.
If you don’t have a Blackberry, you’re a zero - according to ANZ bank exec. July 16, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Business Etiquette, Last Job, PDA , Comments
… something I wrote in 2007, which has been sitting in the "should get around to publishing" queue.
"If you don’t have a Blackberry, you’re a Zero", according to Kimberley Reid, Head of People Capital and Communications, Operations Technology and Shared Services, for the ANZ Bank. And it’s changed ""paradigms"" too.
Yes, I’ve been on an airplane again. Reading the drivel which passes for the in-flight magazine.
Management, aka "The Bosses", often come back from a trip with a bright shiny idea. This months? We want to pilot Blackberrys… "Been reading an in-flight magazine, have we?"
Fantales are more popular than Minties! 
I was training some people last week, and part of the training preparation is to setup bowls of lollies for the attendees to munch on.
Fantales are more popular than Minties, by a factor of 4 to 1.
Some of the things I don’t miss with my old employer July 10, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Last Job, Resignation , Comments
Some of the things I don’t miss with my old employer:
- Being “re-org’d” in May 2007 while being at a workshop in England.
- Going from a non-billable position to being required to be 100% billable. Found this out via email, my manager couldn’t be bothered telling me this face to face.
- Bedridden with flu for 2 weeks while on annual leave. Manager didn’t want to reimburse the leave. And didn’t.
This was the straw which broke the camel’s back. - Seeing a colleague berated in email by our manager, then the email mysteriously disappearing from the email system. (no, the email system didn’t have a recall function)
- Manager passing off work as their own, to senior management.
- Not a word from my team lead or manager when they visited Melbourne
eg. not “sorry to see you go.” - The last year truly sucked.
On a positive note:
- worked with some truly great people.
JT - darn fine Team Lead, who’s now working as a architect.
The guy from Oklahoma. His capacity for quality work output amazes me. - was proud to have led a couple of great guys.
- worked with some cool technology.