Maurice Martinez, the director of personnel, tried to explain why the system worked the way it did, but no one wanted to listen. I don't need to hear all this again. Just stop getting in the way. The mayor got a little heated in return. He even suggested at one point that department heads were trying to blame Personnel for their own inadequacies.
Personnel is too much of an obstacle to our efforts to improve performance.
You've been working for this mayor long enough to know exactly what these words mean. He will expect some kind of report, at least a progress report, at the directors' meeting next month. So you get started. You walk over to Personnel and drop in on Maurice Martinez. Here, too, the response isn't much of a surprise.