ladelfina
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2005
- Messages
- 2,713
Wow, chinaco, this is an excellent sketch. No doubt you have thought about this a lot.. I was never employed in a large org., but believe me, I had a number of the young eager-beaver managers as clients and felt a similar resistance to tried-and-true advice. I'm sure as consultants we disappointed a few along the way. Really, we had to turn our brains off at times and just step back and give the youngsters (heh! we were 40, they were 30) what they asked for and let the ramifications fall on them.
Depends on reading the situation, but I might try the tactic of being "all ears" and just mimicking the young'uns just to see how it works once. You can't be blamed if all you are is the peppy team player following instructions; the project will live or die based on the whole team rather than falling disproportionately on you. Remember, these are the folks with the "alternative reality" and you're in it.
OR, in standing your ground, just document everything heavily in your defense. Be dispassionate in reviewing the project track to see "what went wrong" and let your predictions/results speak for themselves. Defend your reasonings (in a non-defensive way) and let the youngsters know who, what, where, why in black and white. If this is all done with a cheerful attitude, for the good of the company, at least you'll know you've done your best even if the chips still don't fall your way.
Either route will require restraint and acting skills to project "enthusiasm" and suppress skepticism, however rational. Take each project from the POV of never having seen it before. Make your objections out to be something you worked hard to discover and present --in the project's best interests-- they are surprising even to you!! Mask the scent of their being the concentrated, succinct, yet "withered" fruit of experience. "Gee! Youngboss, I really thought your bright idea was great! I did research it, and came up with XYZ negatives. Whaddya think!?" (The risk is that, if this is skillfully done and the project successfully changes course, youngboss will get credit for your brilliance.)
I think this plays out over and over again because it's just modern life in a nutshell. Generations reject the "wisdom of the ancients" and have to find out some things the hard way. All I can say is that you need to find a way to side-step this downward spiral. Maybe you can gather together a group of similarly sidelined folk and start a consulting biz marketing experience, experience, experience, taking your message over the youngsters heads to the top decision makers and focusing on results.
I remember a quote from Raymond Loewy, a famous industrial designer, who when asked by a client how a new package could increase sales, said (paraphrasing from memory): "when a client comes and asks me to help their company with a new bread package, sometimes all I can do is tell them to get out of the bread business". Company boosters are not really able to see their own defects from the inside.
----
I agree w/Texas Proud, too, about the youngsters on the fast track. We kept seeing young managers come and go at our big clients. However incompetent, they usually moved up.. mostly because they were never in any one place long enough for their mistakes to catch up with them. I started to realize this was a pervasive (and highly successful!) strategy:
Stage 1: Learning the Ropes [6-12 mo.]
Manager is covered because he is running around with a lot of enthusiasm, planning all the big changes he is going to make to get noticed. He goes about dismantling the work of the old manager, because if he leaves anything in place he doesn't look like he is "doing" enough. Not accountable since he is just starting out.
Stage 2: Reality Sinks In [12-24 mo.]
Now there is a lull, as the projects lumber forward. The cracks start to show, the bills start coming due. Maybe manager can't keep all the balls in the air.
Stage 3: Onward and Upward [2-6 mo.]
The manager already has her eye cast elsewhere, and starts being less available to respond to critical issues because she is out schmoozing to re-position herself. Then there is a small flurry of activity and pressure to "wrap up" projects that were half-baked to begin with. This, if she is conscientious. Otherwise, things fall into a black hole. Not accountable since she is on the way out.
Rinse and repeat. The secret is in maximizing the "transition times" and milking them for all they are worth. The career-climbing middle-manager wants the least amount of real impact possible. They are not managing their underlings; the only thing they are managing is their "career path". The Company, co-workers, suppliers are all just stepping-stones, not building stones.
If we were "lucky" we would be conceded, by the new manager, the privilege of [-]wasting[/-] investing our time in trying to woo the old client (new manager). I would estimate that this was about 99% unsuccessful and, just statistically speaking, proves that it had nothing to do with our performance or "fit" with the overall client.
Out with the old, in with the new. Clockwork.
Since every few years we'd get dumped by the new manager who had to re-invent the wheel and bring in her/his new suppliers/consultants/etc., not only did all our hard work go down the drain, but this also entailed huge costs for the client -- what could we do? It wasn't that bad for us because usually exiting manager would do exactly the same thing, and we'd be brought in to work with the new client! But the process was very painful since it still wasted a lot of time in presentations and going over someone else's old ground. We learned that our client was never "Company X" (to whom we were invisible and disposable), but "Manager X" (as long as we kept propping her up and making her look good). The real interests of Company X were nowhere to be found in this equation.
There was an inordinate amount of waste, since we, too, could hardly say.. "we really like the way this product/project/campaign as it is - leave it be". (though we actually did do that on a couple of occasions). We had to play the "innovation" game, too. "Why are we hiring you if you're not going to change things completely!?"
That's why it stopped being fun and I got out of that racket. We really wanted to see long-term results but weren't allowed to. The managers-on-the-go can spin the historical red flag of job-hopping into the new buzzwords of "flexibility" and "responding to new opportunities" etc. etc.
Depends on reading the situation, but I might try the tactic of being "all ears" and just mimicking the young'uns just to see how it works once. You can't be blamed if all you are is the peppy team player following instructions; the project will live or die based on the whole team rather than falling disproportionately on you. Remember, these are the folks with the "alternative reality" and you're in it.
OR, in standing your ground, just document everything heavily in your defense. Be dispassionate in reviewing the project track to see "what went wrong" and let your predictions/results speak for themselves. Defend your reasonings (in a non-defensive way) and let the youngsters know who, what, where, why in black and white. If this is all done with a cheerful attitude, for the good of the company, at least you'll know you've done your best even if the chips still don't fall your way.
Either route will require restraint and acting skills to project "enthusiasm" and suppress skepticism, however rational. Take each project from the POV of never having seen it before. Make your objections out to be something you worked hard to discover and present --in the project's best interests-- they are surprising even to you!! Mask the scent of their being the concentrated, succinct, yet "withered" fruit of experience. "Gee! Youngboss, I really thought your bright idea was great! I did research it, and came up with XYZ negatives. Whaddya think!?" (The risk is that, if this is skillfully done and the project successfully changes course, youngboss will get credit for your brilliance.)
I think this plays out over and over again because it's just modern life in a nutshell. Generations reject the "wisdom of the ancients" and have to find out some things the hard way. All I can say is that you need to find a way to side-step this downward spiral. Maybe you can gather together a group of similarly sidelined folk and start a consulting biz marketing experience, experience, experience, taking your message over the youngsters heads to the top decision makers and focusing on results.
I remember a quote from Raymond Loewy, a famous industrial designer, who when asked by a client how a new package could increase sales, said (paraphrasing from memory): "when a client comes and asks me to help their company with a new bread package, sometimes all I can do is tell them to get out of the bread business". Company boosters are not really able to see their own defects from the inside.
----
I agree w/Texas Proud, too, about the youngsters on the fast track. We kept seeing young managers come and go at our big clients. However incompetent, they usually moved up.. mostly because they were never in any one place long enough for their mistakes to catch up with them. I started to realize this was a pervasive (and highly successful!) strategy:
Stage 1: Learning the Ropes [6-12 mo.]
Manager is covered because he is running around with a lot of enthusiasm, planning all the big changes he is going to make to get noticed. He goes about dismantling the work of the old manager, because if he leaves anything in place he doesn't look like he is "doing" enough. Not accountable since he is just starting out.
Stage 2: Reality Sinks In [12-24 mo.]
Now there is a lull, as the projects lumber forward. The cracks start to show, the bills start coming due. Maybe manager can't keep all the balls in the air.
Stage 3: Onward and Upward [2-6 mo.]
The manager already has her eye cast elsewhere, and starts being less available to respond to critical issues because she is out schmoozing to re-position herself. Then there is a small flurry of activity and pressure to "wrap up" projects that were half-baked to begin with. This, if she is conscientious. Otherwise, things fall into a black hole. Not accountable since she is on the way out.
Rinse and repeat. The secret is in maximizing the "transition times" and milking them for all they are worth. The career-climbing middle-manager wants the least amount of real impact possible. They are not managing their underlings; the only thing they are managing is their "career path". The Company, co-workers, suppliers are all just stepping-stones, not building stones.
If we were "lucky" we would be conceded, by the new manager, the privilege of [-]wasting[/-] investing our time in trying to woo the old client (new manager). I would estimate that this was about 99% unsuccessful and, just statistically speaking, proves that it had nothing to do with our performance or "fit" with the overall client.
Out with the old, in with the new. Clockwork.
Since every few years we'd get dumped by the new manager who had to re-invent the wheel and bring in her/his new suppliers/consultants/etc., not only did all our hard work go down the drain, but this also entailed huge costs for the client -- what could we do? It wasn't that bad for us because usually exiting manager would do exactly the same thing, and we'd be brought in to work with the new client! But the process was very painful since it still wasted a lot of time in presentations and going over someone else's old ground. We learned that our client was never "Company X" (to whom we were invisible and disposable), but "Manager X" (as long as we kept propping her up and making her look good). The real interests of Company X were nowhere to be found in this equation.
There was an inordinate amount of waste, since we, too, could hardly say.. "we really like the way this product/project/campaign as it is - leave it be". (though we actually did do that on a couple of occasions). We had to play the "innovation" game, too. "Why are we hiring you if you're not going to change things completely!?"
That's why it stopped being fun and I got out of that racket. We really wanted to see long-term results but weren't allowed to. The managers-on-the-go can spin the historical red flag of job-hopping into the new buzzwords of "flexibility" and "responding to new opportunities" etc. etc.
