Turkey Club

Some days, I feel like the Emperor.

The new development paradigm has been adopted aggressively. I am totally fine with the demarcated white boards, the multi-colored special order sticky notes of various sizes and thicknesses, and the extra-fine black Sharpies whose scribblings are viewable from 8′ away (if you care to try to crack the code that is Captain Sarcastic’s Doctor Script). It’s simple and the people seem to be happy with it.

I still assert the benefit is not so much the process as it is letting people do what they’re supposed to be doing, Canary Yellow notwithstanding.

“S+M” have latched onto the concept. Naturally, they have to give it a macho-sounding name like “SWAT team,” because “Special Weapons and Tactics” evokes images of being pro-active! Decisive! Held accountable! It’s humorous when they refer to sub-one month milestones as “strategic.” I have to remind myself whom I’m working with.

A downside of the combined LEAN/SWAT is the zeal to have meetings, especially ones that I “have to” participate. For example, my day looked like this:

• 09:00 - phone call with a customer. This was my most productive hour all day.
• 10:00 - 5-minute stand-up meeting. This one is optional, but since it I was supposed to present the results yesterday, I have a vested interest in being informed so I can spin appropriately. It’s good news this week!
• 10:30 - 15 -minute meeting that ran over time because no one else is willing to start a meeting on time if a bigwig is not present. There is no business value in wasting the time of 15 other employees.
• 11:05 - Cliff wanted to talk with me. (More on this later.)
• 11:30 - hour-long lunch with a consultant.
• 13:00 - 30-minute meeting to agree on the standards among all of the SWAT Teams. There was no “Dun dun dun. dun dun dun. dun dun duh” theme music, but I was fishing for a weapon. Don’t ask me why.
• 14:00 - 30-minute review of hot tub schematics. Okay, this was enjoyable if only for the artistic renditions of the final product: happy couples engaging in aquatic play. (Hey, it’s better than the SWAT team meeting.)
• 15:00 - hour-long homebuilding recap. I walked out of this one at 30 minutes when they started delving into the minutiae of galvanized nails.
• 16:00 - 45-minute proposal review with a junior employee about mostly low-level minutiae like proper capitalization of the table of contents headers in instruction manuals. By this point, I was very punchy. I hope I didn’t sound too rude when I tried explaining “You are the expert. If you think it’s important, do it. Budget time for this in the schedule you present me, but I do not need TPS reports.”

This schedule fragmentation makes it difficult to progress on anything require upper-level cognitive ability, like analyzing the Toll Brothers’ business strategy.  With a 23 minute bloc between 10:06 and 10:29, I just start getting my motivation before I have to jet off to another meeting.

A larger problem is I have a notion that I must accomplish a certain amount of work per day. With the extra meetings, I feel compelled to work late to “catch up.” Long days ensue.  It’s not sustainable.

This was weighing on me when Cliff popped in to relay his concerns that my body language has not been thoroughly embracing LAMP, the latest S+M initiative. The concept is we will identify a large customer — Home Depot — for extra special loving. We do nice things for them that no other vendor would do and we become ensconced in their business, selling into more areas.

As I explained to Cliff, I’m totally with the concept if it means we’re using Home Depot as a proxy to prospect problems that may be pervasive in other companies. I need to have veto power when they say “we would be really happy if you designed a line of HD orange vanities,” and S+M thinks that’s the path to being showered by rose petals.  Bright orange toilets are not a pervasive problem that merit diverting my team.  It’s a project better suited for our phalanx of consultants.

The bigger concern is whether S+M can maintain any semblance of discipline. Today, we’re all about Loving Home Depot. Tomorrow, it’s Home Depot and Lowe’s. Monday, it’s Home Depot, Lowe’s and Sears. Tuesday, it’s Home Depot, Lowe’s, Sears and Wal-Mart. Wednesday … you get the idea. By the end of the month, the list includes Ace Hardware, Target and anyone else with money, yet we’ll accomplish nothing.

The body language thing is a problem. I wonder if this is my id’s way of saying I’m burning out?