Disqus - Latest Comments for cesaridrovo

Re: Killing the enterprise by decree

César — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:22:22 -0000

I totally agree Jason. Every time this action is taken in the industry (and we're still talking mainly about our observation of Investment Banking IT, I guess) it has a negative effect for that reason. I share your view that the ones who leave end up getting more elsewhere. Even when the ones who replace them appear to cost less, they are disproportionately less productive so the value for your money drops significantly. If you are lucky they eventually grow into the job - just in time for the cycle to complete and another sweeping 10% cut...

Smoke and mirrors should be outlawed both as as management methodology and as an accounting practice. I wonder if senior management or the executive board or whoever comes up with these decisions are blissfully unaware that the net effect of this short term accounting fix is in fact to hurt the company.

Re: Killing the enterprise by decree

César — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:15:01 -0000

Thanks for offering the contractors' point of view Neil. That is another very good example. The bigger the company, the more tempting it must be to use this bullying tactic which says "we're big and you're small and there's nothing you can do about it".

There might be a number of underlying assumptions at work, such as:
- A 10% cut is too small to trigger a mass departure.
- The change will be perceived as industry-wide because everyone is hit at once.
- By making it indiscriminate contractors and managers won't feel targeted.
- A 10% cut is better than losing one's job, in other words: "misery loves company".
- Middle managers will welcome not having to deal with conflict resolution because they are encouraged to legitimately claim it's out of their control.
- Those managers couldn't be trusted to make the necessary cuts anyway because they are consumed by empire-building.

The total lack of respect implied by this action is also pretty insulting as a manager, so I suspect those who stay are the ones who would welcome having no participation in such decisions.

Re: Productivity booster-pack

César — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:57:42 -0000

We will get an opportunity to ask Salesforce.com about the "jelling" impact of their Big-Bang adoption of Agile on the overall enterprise. They will be presenting on this topic at the BayAPLN event on July 15th.

Their experience would influence my expectations on what could be achieved by targeted initiatives like the one I'm suggesting on this post.

Re: What is a Nonlinear Enterprise?

César — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 12:53:27 -0000

Hello Sue, and welcome to Nonlinear Enterprise.
Your own blog has a number of things that complement nicely what I'm trying to do here. I hope you will continue to drop by and help guide me to keep this interesting and useful.
César.

Re: Hire and promote first on integrity

César — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:08:55 -0000

Thanks for your comment Denis.

I guess you had to be there and I may have failed to match Pollyanna's practised delivery. She expanded on this with her interpretation of Dee Hock's views by saying that it was absolutely essential to be able to trust your people. If you don't trust them, be it to do the job right or even not to steal from you, then they should probably be removed or not hired in the first place, and the other attributes don't really matter in this case.

In every-day situations such as software engineering, there are those who will refuse to develop functionality they suspect supports illegal or even dubious activity unless the legal department is brought in on the decision. These are often also prepared to lose their jobs to stand by their ethics and sleep well at night. There are others who accept such a request thinking that either no-one will ever know or that if found out they can hide behind the excuse that they were following requirements. I know which of these two I want to work with.

When we exclude such boundary cases then I agree with you that the focus should be on the balance of qualities. Even more than that, the selection needs to pay due consideration for the balance of the team and the enterprise.