ThermoMeter

As I mentioned earlier, my team requires a lot of lead time to ramp up The Machine’s production of widgets. Much of this lead time is governed by the external vendors we work with, but it’s predictable. The hardest deadlines are for advertising. For example, a print advertisement in a major magazine has a three-month lead time to be proofed and paid for. Printing collateral is a “softer” deadline: we can reduce the lead time if we’re willing to pile on lots and lots of cash. For example, a manual produced with eight weeks advance notice might cost us $10 per unit. If we wanted to do this in four weeks, it would cost $20 per unit. Two weeks lead: $50 per unit. Less than a week: $150 and our vendor issues a fatwa. Obviously, we try hard to have everything done in advance.

For the last three months, I have mechanically cited a specific, looming date as our hard go/no-go decision point. El Jefe has finally started realizing that if the “go” milestone is not achieved, I will slip the delivery date. No one wants this to happen, but the alternatives involve the sounds of advertisement dollars flushing down the toilet, a battalion of sock puppets being deployed to our sales team, and the ire of an crotchety operations team stuck in “hurry up and wait.”

To underscore the importance of the go/no-go date with his team, El Jefe’s brainstorm was to affix a visual “thermometer” (except he spells it Thermo Meter) to the doorway leading to the corporate break room. Because if you can’t remove obstacles and let your team do its job, the next best thing is to put up a cryptic, colorful graph to confuse the fuck out of everyone.

El Jefe: Here is a draft of the ThermoMeter. I would like your comments.

Captain Sarcastic: [You even capitalize the M when you speak?!] This is confusing. If you miss one milestone, a domino effect occurs.

El Jefe: [blank look]

Captain Sarcastic: Have you consulted your team?

El Jefe: [blank look]

Captain Sarcastic: I will need some time to finish another, more interesting task before I am able to comment.

I spent most of the day vetting the numbers with his team members. The Documentation Team offered its usual colorful analysis of him: copy changes due Thanksgiving eve were not going to be back from the printer the Friday after Thanksgiving (a company holiday). The quality assurance team observed that the dates were fine only if they were tasked with testing one product, which they were not. Engineering also had a “that’s not what we signed up for” look on their face. By the end of the day, I had a hand-written schedule of milestones that people agreed upon for one of the products. I walked through this with El Jefe, leaving him with a copy for reference, again suggesting he consult with his team.

Sunday morning, I popped up to the office and saw a newly-printed ThermoMeter on the wall. It was only slightly changed from the original. There was also a ThermoMeter for a second product. Its dates and milestones were identical. Not only did El Jefe fail to consult his team, he demonstrated his complete lack of understanding of the other products his team is building. I marked up the ThermoMeters and left them on his workstation. I had an off-site Monday morning, but saw he had posted an unchanged version.

During our company meeting, he confused the “general availability” (when customers can actually purchase widgets) with “announcement date” (when marketing times its public relations campaign). Doris, a production person, and Rudy, a salesman, the two twitchiest people in the company, both freaked out. To stave off more confusion, I sent a company-wide email reiterating the dates are contingent on achieving certain milestones.