Abusive Employee Relationships

In my travels, I have observed many different forms of racism and bigotry but none so sinister as what I have observed in terms of outsourcing. Corporate HR rules requires people to be cordial so much of the horrific practices aren't verbalized.

Most recently, I observed a person of Indian descent being abused by an American who was senior to this individual. While I probably did a horrific job of providing feedback to this abusive American, it was made clear that I had no interest in any rationalization he could provide. What I struggled to understand with the employee being abused was the fact that he tolerated the abuse and simply decided to let it go so as to not make waves.

I often ask myself how often does this occur and was this just a one-time event? Sadly, I know the answer to this question as I have observed it on more than one occasion. What becomes especially challenging is to report a situation to human resources especially when the abuser is viewed as a proverbial rockstar in the culture. Most human resource departments make it relatively easy to report challenges with regular employees but seek to defend their top performers.

As a person who cares immensely about the human condition and wants the best for all people regardless of their gender or ethnic origin, I have struggled to understand the below questions and hope that others will be able to provide insight:

• How to encourage people from other cultures to stand up for themselves without being viewed as a rabble rouser?
• What to do when human resources themselves reflects a particular bias and loses objectivity?
• Are there techniques to help encourage Americans who suffer from authoritative ignorance to see the light without resorting to human resources?

Thoughts on Enterprise IT Projects and Aggressive Schedules (Part Two)

Increasingly, in cultures that encourage aggressive schedules become inclined to pass out blame at the lowest-level workers vs. take accountability for suboptimal planning...



I have yet to visit a Fortune enterprise where infrastructure team isn't getting beat up for wanting to follow a disciplined process. Production is king and operations teams need to follow more rigorous processes while avoiding shortcuts in order to ensure system availability. Most operations groups are considered cost centers and suffer from the ability to be close to the business and therefore do the best they can with the resources allotted. So frequently, we hear the question: "Why can't these guys ever meet their schedules?"

This frequently practiced behavior should beg the answering to at least a few questions, including but not limited to:

• Who is really at fault when you believe or are forced to believe there is no such thing as a bad schedule, only bad performances that resulted in missing the scheduled date?
• If the date is missed, does it truly matter? Will the business more easily forgive you if you deliver high quality and under budget if late or would they prefer on time, low quality and over budget?
• Is the purpose of the scheduling all about planning or is it about goal setting? Work that is not performed according to the plan invalidates the plan. Nothing more, nothing less.

So, what would it take for your organization to acknowledge that a missed schedule indicts the planners, not the workers? Even if the workers are bumbling boneheaded incompetent idiots, a plan that takes careful note of their inadequacies can help to minimize the damage. However, a plan that takes little/zero account of realities is not just useless but utterly dangerous.

Cultures that are broken exhibit the lack of accountability in the right places. The people who set the schedule, not just the one who failed to meet it, need to be held accountable....

Thoughts on Enterprise IT Projects and Aggressive Schedules (Part One)

In my experience, the majority projects in which the schedule is commonly termed "aggressive", it invariably turn out to be a fiasco...



Historically speaking, IT has always delivered at least 50% of their projects either over budget or late or both. So, by having leadershipmanagement declare an aggressive schedule, what do you think they hope to accomplish especially when being aggressive isn't back testable?

Independent of the stupidity of leadership, the bigger question is in asking yourself how do we avoid stepping in it? Could it be that in the commitment stage of project work something comes over us in the way the evil Mr. Hyde could take over kindly Dr. Jekyll?

Is this a question of diversity or should I say the lack of it? Should a team be solely comprised of blissfully ignorant optimists or should it have a healthy balance of pessimists who help keep conversations balanced? I come from the school of thought that says if you have two people who think alike, then you only need one...



Overcommitment is not just an accident! Companies sometimes take purposeful steps to build an overcommitment ethic into their managers and IT culture. Encouraging overcommitment may seem bizarre to many who are not familiar with an article of faith common to many managers. There is a school of thought that says while everyone knows that they won't hit the original date, there is no harm to the effort. This belief system is less about IT discipline and more about articles of faith.

Now, for those who simply aren't believers and haven't drunk the Kool-aid preferring rationale thinking over hype and indoctrination will come to see aggressive scheduling as a ludicrous worst practice.

Imagine setting a goal to build a McMansion in one week. Unindoctrinated outsiders will remind you that this kind of performance is not inline with reality. We ignore common sense and best practices while continuing to champion a distorted form of heroism and figure out that we will need at least one hundred skills framers on site ready to swing hammers on Tuesday, that we need fast drying cement when we pour the foundation on Monday and of course all the materials have to be onsite prior to everything getting started.

Reality says we will ignore the fact that having all the materials onsite will simply get in the way and show the work effort down. We will also conveniently forget that this form of aggressiveness will require us to have plumbers show up before there is anything to plumb or for electricians without anything to wire. Now, one little thing slips and in order to make up time, we end up skipping all the necessary inspections. At the end of the project, we got a house that is of low quality and costs at least double of what it cost to do right. More importantly, you hit the date but do you think the customer will be happy?