On Fri, 25 Apr 2008 05:35:52 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> AAAAAAAARGH!!!
> 
>   Here you go again. I thought you said you have lessened these types
> of attentiont-seeking posts... ;)

He did it because he knew he'd get some attention from you, Warp. ;-)

Jim

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On Fri, 25 Apr 2008 09:07:48 -0500, Mike Raiford wrote:

> Gilles Tran wrote:
> 
> 
>> Keep 'em coming, I need material for your web comic :P
>> 
>> G.
>> 
>> 
> This I've got to see ...

Ditto. ;-)

I've been waiting for the next installment - someone *did* save those 
off, didn't they?

Giles?  Got an archive you can post somewhere?

Jim

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>>> John (with chianti and fava beans)
>>> ....and again I'm opening the dictionary...
>>>
>> It's a reference to a meal Dr Hannibal Lecter ate
> 
> Oh yes, I realise that. I just don't know what fava beans or chianti
> actually *is*.
> 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/glossary/f.shtml?fava_beans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chianti

John

-- 
I will be brief but not nearly so brief as Salvador Dali, who gave the
world's shortest speech. He said, "I will be so brief I am already
finished," then he sat down.

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On Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:32:24 +0100, Doctor John <doc### [at] gmailcom>
wrote:

>Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> 
>> Actually, wasn't there some advert for something that featured an entire
>> office of people using beanie bags instead of real chairs? Something
>> like "you could give everybody beanie bags to create an informal and
>> inspiring atmosphere, but if you REALLY want to boost productivity, buy
>> product X"...
>> 
>Hmm. Rings a faint bell in the dim and distant past. Maybe Stephen
>remembers it ;-)
>

Maybe he does?
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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On Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:34:15 +0100, Doctor John <doc### [at] gmailcom>
wrote:

> ...and don't forget the silence of the lambs

The first one that came to mind was a pregnant silence ;)

>John (with chianti and fava beans)

Slurp! Yum!
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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On Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:02:53 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> I really hope I manage to sort out this giant mess sometime soon -
> because I do *not* enjoy being this worked up.

You know, I just ran across something yesterday that's helping me with a 
vaguely similar situation; look for a book entitled "Perfect Phrases for 
Dealing with Difficult People: Hundreds of Ready-to-Use Phrases for 
Handling Conflict, Confrontations, and Challenging Personalities" by 
Susan F. Benjamin.

I'm not a huge fan of this type of book - "phrasebook" puts me off, 
because there's no ready-made list of things you can say that will make 
things all better, because situations vary widely, so just a list of 
"comebacks" tends to not be useful.

This book includes some of that, but in the context of understanding the 
underlying motivations that people have - and the strategies you can use 
to get what you need out of the working relationship.  So rather than 
being a "cookbook" of "in this situation, say this and everything will be 
fine", it instead discusses the underlying motivations behind someone 
who, say, has a negative attitude, and then focuses on how you can direct 
them in a way to get what you want/need.

So, for example, from Part 3 - "Perfect Phrases for Communicating with 
Difficult Bosses", an example given has to do with distant, weak, or 
hands-off bosses.  The suggested strategy is to be more proactive in 
communicating with the boss - so rather than just saying "my boss doesn't 
listen to me", continue to provide them with feedback, ideas, and your 
opinions.  They need to be presented in a way that is positive (ie, focus 
on positive results, not the problems you're trying to avoid".

In your situation, you've got someone who's taken total control away from 
you, and you feel this will leave you holding the bag when the auditors 
come in.  Take a minute to talk with the head guy from HQ and say "you 
know, I'm really concerned about the changes here, not because they're 
not going to be better for the organization, but instead because when the 
auditors come, I'm the one they're going to talk to - and I don't 
understand why you're making the changes you're making.  Since our 
company is answerable to regulatory authorities, can you help me 
understand these changes so I can explain them to the auditors and avoid 
the company potentially being fined over something that I just didn't 
understand?"

What this does is it acknowledges the expertise they bring (whether 
there's any real expertise or not there isn't particularly relevant - 
they're the ones calling the shots, and you'll get a better response from 
them if you acknowledge their position in a positive manner).  "You guys 
clearly have a plan here - but I feel I need to understand this 
because ..." and give them the reasons.

Then follow the conversation up with a quick e-mail - it never hurts to 
have a paper trail.  Be objective in the e-mail rather than subjective, 
and more specific rather than less.  "Per our discussion, you'll provide 
me with full documentation for these changes for the next audit by June 
21, 2008.  Does that date sound good to you?" - that gives you a 
trackable goal they need to achieve, and if they don't meet it, you can 
refer back to that agreement when the auditors are scheduling their time 
to come in (if they do that, I don't know if they do or not).  By ending 
with the question, you give them the opportunity to say "yes".  That 
works well in person as well.

A friend of mine has tried an experiment along these lines recently - her 
boss is a micromanager.  New boss, unfamiliar with the business, wants to 
change everything right now to what he thinks the business should be 
doing.  Recently, there was a discussion about a decision point where the 
boss was very adamant about a change being put in place that my friend 
was dead-set against.  Instead of digging in, she acknowledged the 
experience the new boss has, but presented a different perspective and 
followed that up with an e-mail outlining a possible compromise that 
could allow the boss to implement what he wanted, it wasn't without any 
controls at all (which was the perception of the initial request).  By 
suggesting there might be room to make the suggested change but while 
incorporating some reasonable controls, my friend was able to say to the 
boss "I can see this is a good idea, but I'd rather not compromise 'x', 
'y', and 'z' because we've worked hard to address those issues, and I 
feel that this could undermine the issues we've worked so hard to resolve 
the past 2 years.  But if we did 'a', 'b', and 'c', we could accomplish 
this goal without compromising on the things we've fixed."

The response was quite positive from the boss - and I suspect (as I don't 
know the boss in question) that the boss was more receptive to these 
suggestions because there was an acknowledgment that the idea wasn't a 
bad one and with some minor tweaks, it would be workable and could 
actually resolve more issues.

Anyways, have a look for the book - I've been impressed with it so far, 
from the standpoint of the insights.  Since I've had to deal with some 
difficult people recently myself (including one individual who actually 
filed legal action to get their way), I thought it might be worth a look, 
and I've learned quite a bit as a result.

Jim

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> And *they* know the Enterprise Administrator password that trumps all 
> other passwords in the Active Directory forest.

Sure. Can you change that also?

Or, at least you'll know when someone changes stuff out from under you. 
  "Boss, I can't do my job, because the people at HQ keep changing the 
administrator passwords."

>  Not to mention that, as 
> my direct superiors, they have the power to order me to do things. [Such 
> as, say, HAND OVER THE PASSWORDS.]

Of course. But then you say "What do you need them for, for my auditing 
records?"

The point is not to prevent them from doing their work, but preventing 
them from doing work you don't know about.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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>> And *they* know the Enterprise Administrator password that trumps all 
>> other passwords in the Active Directory forest.
> 
> Sure. Can you change that also?

Hehehe. As if I would ever be privy to such sensitive information...

>>  Not to mention that, as my direct superiors, they have the power to 
>> order me to do things. [Such as, say, HAND OVER THE PASSWORDS.]
> 
> Of course. But then you say "What do you need them for, for my auditing 
> records?"

The answer will be that then they can remotely fix things when I'm not 
around, or if I don't know the fix. The guys in HQ are very big on the 
idea that they can solve anybody's problem, anywhere in the company. 
They tend to forget that by the time they know there's a problem, the UK 
has been off-air for about 5 hours. (Can you spell "time zones"?)

> The point is not to prevent them from doing their work, but preventing 
> them from doing work you don't know about.

If there's one thing I've figured out, it's this: The Director of IT may 
or may not be any good at IT, but he is *guaranteed* to be better at 
politics than you. He had to get there somehow...

In fairness, they're not geniunely *trying* to make my job harder. 
They're just not terribly organised, and they don't really think through 
the consequences of their actions. And they're hopeless at communicating...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Fri, 25 Apr 2008 22:12:35 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> The Director of IT may
> or may not be any good at IT, but he is *guaranteed* to be better at
> politics than you. He had to get there somehow...

In my experience, that's actually generally not the case.  Many times, 
it's not that they're better at politics, but rather that they ended up 
with responsibilities they hadn't planned on when they were first hired.

Hell, that's how I ended up in my current role.  If you'd asked me 5 
years ago if I'd be a program manager, I'd have told you there was no way 
I'd leave the technical field.

Yet here I am, slowly losing some of my technical acumen because I don't 
use it every day the way I used to.  Doesn't mean I'm IT-stupid by any 
stretch - and in fact it's helped me in working with my IT organisation, 
because I can say "I've BTDTGTTS, so I understand where you're coming 
from".

But several of the bosses I've worked for over the years - in IT and out 
of it - got promoted not because of their political skills, but because 
they had some quality that the person doing the promotion was looking for 
- a vision, an idea, even in a couple of cases they were friends/long-
time colleagues with the person doing the promotion.

> In fairness, they're not geniunely *trying* to make my job harder.
> They're just not terribly organised, and they don't really think through
> the consequences of their actions. And they're hopeless at
> communicating...

Whereas you aren't.  I'm serious about that, when you put your mind to 
it, you do a good job communicating - so use those skills in talking with 
them.  It sounds like you're on the right track with following them 
around and writing stuff down - don't be afraid to say to them "hey, slow 
down - I know you've got a lot of work to do, but I need to record this 
for the audit and I'm falling behind here."

Jim

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Warp wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>>> With great responsibility comes great power
>>>   Wasn't it the other way around?-)
> 
>> Well as you both know, it *should* be that the two come together - you 
>> are held responsible for that which you actually have power over. But - 
>> as I'm sure you're also both aware - this is sadly not always the case...
> 
>   You mean sometimes you are held responsible for things which are not
> under your control at all?
> 
Essentially that has been his main complaint here over the years in his 
blog posts. I.e. the ones in which he did not complain about the lack of 
female company other than his mother.
He is responsible for much of the network and the functioning of the 
company software. So his company made sure there was always a key 
component in the US that could be changed there overnight.
This thread was initiated because he is responsible for the, legally 
required, documentation of the changes made to the systems. So someone 
higher up decided to let a bunch of guys without any knowledge of the 
legal implications take much of his computers apart and install new 
programs. He was there to record what was going on (hopefully enough to 
fake a standard procedure retrospectively) but they would just as well 
have done it when he was on holiday.
If they had given him the power that goes with this responsibility, he 
should have given these guys the documents that explain the legal 
requirements and told them to go home and come back the next day after 
reading it. As it is his power to do appears to be just below that of 
the cleaning lady.

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