Choose Two
There’s an old joke in politics:
Honest. Effective. Electable. (Choose two)
The internal business plan, now on its bezillionth draft, takes this to an entirely new level:
Fast. Cheap. Reliable. Secure. Delivered on time. OSHA-compliant. Backward compatible. Forward-compatible. Self-documenting. User-friendly. Extensible. Feature-rich. Supports Unicode, Klingon and Navajo. 100% US recommended daily allowance of fiber Seamlessly integrated with Outlook. Machine washable. Easy to maintain. Sellable from the links. Fits on a 3 1/2 x 5″ note card. Void in Quebec. Tastes like Chicken. Runs with scissors and Windows Vista. Contents made from at least half post-consumer recyclable materials.
except instead of two, it’s “choose all except, possibly, the thing about tasting like chicken, that’s a nice to have.”
Meanwhile, I’ve got to deal with this consultant Cliff hired for a six-month gig. Initially, he was useful, not so much the miracle worker billed to be, but rather helping us form a framework around stuff we were already doing well.
[Photo from Mark Gallagher. ]
Now, I feel he’s overstayed his welcome. For example, in today’s lean/agile/mambo-number-nine planning meeting, he announced that he would have to take a phone call in a few minutes but, would remain in our meeting. I was pretty upset about this, but apparently exercised some restraint in that I didn’t take his phone and smash it into tiny, plastic bits. I admire the audacity of concurrently billing customers.
