eowyn

We have a new Senior Director of Fund Development who is similarly unclear on the concept.  She actually says things like “I truly believe it will impact us beneficially fiscally” and can’t seem to figure out why no one wants to talk to her. 
A few of us have a running joke that we’re going to have tee shirts made for the next monthly all-mgmt breakfast meeting that read “Please, can I slap Katherine first?” 

Ya know.. I don’t know your bosses but it seemed like a nice enough thing to say to me.. I say endeavors too; they sort of impart that to you in business school.. It’s better than saying Quests but that’s the closest parallel I can think of. 

Crow, your problem is that you don’t leverage all of your hybrid paradigms in a functional manner across the enterprise.  If you just made that your primary action item, you would develop greater synergies and communication methodologies. 

eowyn

Oh, don’t get me wrong.  I absolutely *don’t* levereage all my hybrid paradigms in a functional manner across this enterprise.  There was insufficient buy-in across the action team, compounded by a lack of trigger-pull at the stakeholder level. 

And yes, that was as nice a thing as he could think of to say.  He didn’t *actually* do that… he just mentioned that he’d been meaning to do so… he da yuppie.  Perfectly happy to substitute a placeholder-for-interaction in place of the actual thing. 

I think it’s utterly amazing how corrosively insulting people can be while, relative to their actual cold-bloodedness, being friendly and nice.  I’m sure your boss would be shocked to think that what he’d just done was really to insult you.  Also, there seems to be a disease in our age to pretend to care personally for what was never originally considered a personal realm.  Sometimes I think we’d all get along better if we stopped pretending to care when we don’t.  Or would that put us back in the “woman-unfriendly” business-world of our parents where it’s all office politics and dog-eat-dog? 

eowyn

From what I’ve seen, both in nonprofits and at SBC, it never *stopped* being “all office politics and dog-eat-dog”… we’re just supposed to pretend like it did because, gosh, isn’t this corporation just one big family? 

I for one would absolutely LOVE it if my job description didn’t explicitly state that the nature of my position (Exec Ass to the COO) means that I have to “maintain positive relations with all personnel and departments”… i.e. not matter how big a fuckwit someone happens to be, I am not allowed to say so publicly, and I am also not allowed to tell someone that I think they are incompetent, mentally unstable, alcoholic, or just an ass.  And I’m sick to death of coworkers who (a) don’t do their jobs properly, (b) make mistakes that are almost criminally stupid, and then, when they are called in for a termination interview, manage to avoid consequences because they CRY and give the boss a sob story about how it’s not really their fault. 

Mike

Okay, rather than go through all of that, here is the Cleft Notes version:

Touchy Feely in business, military and general usage sucks.  Honest feedback rules.  You can give honest feedback without being an ass or a USMC Drill Instructor (I had a great description of having someone getting worked out for being a muckup in the corporate world), and if said person can’t hack it in the position, why do you cripple your corporation with deadwood like that?  It isn’t about being insensitive, its about being competent.  The current war has worked wonders for the US Military and some other organizations (unfortunately not the State Department) in getting ride of the touchy-feely power-point rangers and getting the more action oriented types into positions where they can get stuff done.