Alexis' PowerPoints were her shoulder pads ...

Don't Panic - take a deep breath ...

On getting to work this morning, I heard the word Outbreak - hit the PANIC button - not yet really.

It was that rogue Blaster worm from a PC that should never have been connected to our network. The lucky culprit was spared a verbal from me - well we are quite well patched up against that one threat, but it could still be a nuisance.

Allow the C(?)O to think

Remember your first picture book and wax crayons, when you had to colour in all those white spaces to create your own lively work of art? Thinking pristine thoughts, ideas flourishing, creative juices flowing like water off the lip of the Niagara Falls.

At least at that age you did all the work, by being creative and possibly artistic.

However, look what the world has turned into, you have been through kindergarten, primary and secondary education, have some hot degree and an MBA from the top business school; having reached the pinnacle with Chief(?)Officer as your title, the people who report to you bring you a weekly picture book in PowerPoint.

You do not have to do anything; rather, they have to explain what all the pictures mean to you - by Jove! All those years of experience in a career to be rated just below the intelligence of a toddler.

Because, because, because, because, because ... your reports are playing the game of who is the teacher's favourite kid.

Rotten Powerpoints

PowerPoints are just as bad as what was unleashed on us by Japanese Karaoke, garish colours [as toneless singers yodelling worse than a track on the Sound of Music] with every imaginable transition enough to hypnotise you into thinking you are getting informed. A visit to the shop floor would tell you what your reports have been keeping from all the while.

The staff are not the happy smiley lot who say hello in the elevator trying hard to keep from telling you are they overworked, underpaid, under-motivated and continually lied to by your reports who would have a fit if integrity were ever mentioned in three paragraphs after you mention their names.

The Utopia of top-down communication does not exist, however, under the influence of a PowerPoint the fainting spells created by the sycophancy that masquerades as loyal obedience would make you need a defibrillator to hear the WHOLE TRUTH.

How does this all affect me?

I have to fill in time sheets in duplicate, reports in triplicate, PowerPoints in duo-decagate (sic) in 12s, I meant, and still inform you of the incidents, projects, unexpected failures and resolve them all before close of business.

Phew! The day has only begun; even the sun has got its hat on.

Rules of the manager's chess game

A day to cherish

I had to make a few phone calls this morning to sort out a number of financial matters.

Then I had to deal with the unseemly nature of using an umbrella as a cane especially in such fine weather.

So, it was a beeline to The English Hatter for an ivory tipped cane of the best quality; a gentleman in times when it mattered who you were always was fitly dressed with hat and cane – it is the 21^st Century, I think it is just the right thing to do.

Then it was the main English bookstore in Amsterdam for a copy of Tom Peters' Re-imagine. Tom Peters is probably one of the most innovative management authorities of this generation.

He gets you thinking everywhere but in the box; are we not always boxed up in the circumstances we find ourselves, most especially at work.

Petty Tyrants

In reading just the foreword, I could begin to see a world to which I am quite familiar with his initial rant.

"People … in enterprise, in government … are by and large well intentioned. They'd like to get things done. To be of service to others. But they are thwarted … at every step of the way … by absurd organisational barriers … and by the egos of petty tyrants (be they corporate middle managers, or army colonels, or school superintendents).

Even I could not have been that articulate.

Sometime ago I had to tell someone I was at work to do my job rather than just cover my arse; but that in the process of really doing my job I might as well have covered my arse.

Taking liberties of praise

Finger-pointing and accolade hunting are rife within the melee of managers of circumstance rather than merit; appointing ambitious props who being jobs worthies are so far up the management backside, we need a new term for sycophancy.

At one time we hoped we were just pawns in the grand game of corporate chess politics where you shout and are unheard because your boss whilst sitting on you has made it impossible for you to take in air.

But in this new rules chess game, a principal piece gets converted into a pawn on capturing an opponent's chess piece and the King gains an additional power move; first as a bishop, then a knight and then a rook, by which time it moves like a queen, can never be checked and the best you can hope for a bizarre stalemate.

Bad management expertise

As for the original pawns; mindless and monotonous, ball-less minions who know nothing of their professional function than to frustrate everyone else in the team; on the premise that the ability to annoy is management expertise.

Having attended every possible management course they have not learnt that leadership includes an expression of personality which they are not genetically disposed to.

Pen-pushers on acid offered responsibilities that have to be shouldered by more conscientious personnel who are in danger of being besmirched because of the error of managerial judgment.

My friends, this has hardly begun to explain the situation we endure from 9 to 5 in the quest for a pay packet and credibility.

I am an optimist; we belong to the gene pool that is in ascendancy. The day of reckoning cometh, I just cannot wait.

Agreement at the top ... progress below?

Top dog 1

Guys, let's stop this spitting contest right now. It's add zero value for anything or anybody.

Top dog 2

This is the last Email if this kind that I expect to see from both X as Y.
I don't want to see these discussions in E-mail anymore.
They don't contribute to a better organisation.

Two directors on opposite ends agree that what we were doing did not help the organization, I suppose there is a lot they could have done to prevent the ugly situation that developed today, long before now.

It took the statistics of the success of a patch deployment over the weekend to bring us to a point of resolution – suddenly; we have leadership...

The story unfolds...

The day was going to start a little late; I had a Good Samaritan's job to do in helping a friend who was in dire straits. That had to be done early in the day because it had bothered me all night.

Anyhow, before I left home, the call came in - something to do with the patch updates we had rolled out over the weekend - well, I was expecting something close to chaos, but as the day grew older; it yielded surprises that made the surprise rather surprising.

My technical colleague is quite a competent chap; [I interviewed him in December] we work so well as a team; though I am supposed to be in an architecting role and him in an operational role. The big boss is quite determined to create Chinese walls as thick as those on the Three Gorges Dam to allow for sheaves of paperwork that impress no one but provide unnecessary bedtime reading to the CIO.

However, after 8 years of deploying and managing Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) systems; you learn that communication and interfacing with your customer is key to the successful management of technologies that connect to every desktop in your enterprise.

Well, I quite taken aback when I learnt on Friday that he had to recreate the intricate patch deployment package we had already tested with the business about 2 weeks before. I was off to Cologne early that Friday evening in some trepidation that something might be missed out and we would end up with a deluge of calls.

We got calls, but not a deluge, on one site two PCs had failed out of about 400; due to the fact that a self-healing process introduced by Microsoft about 4 years ago had kicked in during the deployment of a certain patch.

This function, which is part of the Windows Installer technology introduced with Microsoft Office 2000, requires that if an application is corrupted or misses some files; the PC can contact the original application files and restore all the missing components. This becomes a nuisance if the original files are on the network and are not contactable.

I took great pains to ensure that we do not need to contact these network sources, but one seemed to have slipped through and was generating a bit of a kafuffle.

Anyway, not being one to throw statistics issues for the sake of it; I still find that I am prone to that foible when it comes to what SMS tells me after a deployment. We generate a whole spreadsheet with the percentage successful in bold red "read me out loud" font and herald the parade of knights.

In this instance, out of five sites, three were quite successful with some errors in single figures, and two had a higher number of errors of almost 70 PCs for some reason we needed to investigate; all of which was highlighted in our statistical report.

However, we the occupying forces could not have been prepared for the guerrilla warfare perpetrated by disgruntled old regime personnel; the incessant drive-by shootings, air to email missiles, terrorist comments to destabilise our implementations, Trojan horse calls which were old problems used to buttress "me too" issues in the 3 sites where there were hardly a failures - for example.

"So I can't give the exact number of PCs where the installation went wrong, but I know that there are at least 2 users with installation problem that I know of."

I suppose 2 out of over 80 is just the problem I need this morning.

Well, you can almost read the frustration in that comment. We set the precedent for George W. Bush on the principle of pre-emptive engagement when we conducted an aggressive takeover of the IT Infrastructure of that company last November.

This was necessary because most of that team constituted a stumbling and obstructive block to the need to update out IT infrastructure and consolidate all our processes. Most were offered an incentive to leave and the bleakest prospect if they stayed.

However, those that were retained were never really intimated with the fact that they had been demoted from third-line support to somewhere between first-line and nominal second-line support. Their management tried to deal with this with technology rather than simply communicate this to those left behind.

The day grew older with commentary running like trench warfare, getting muddier and less forgiving. Till I landed my riposte...

"I could almost say some of the comments below are not entirely representative of the users' views if you are also in the job of promoting the benefits of the Mozart PC infrastructure to your users."

Ouch! I am not the one hurting.