John Linton It has taken a while to get this year started - for the first time in I can't remember when we have not been able to put everything in place before the first day of January and are still completing work that would in every other year of my 'management life' have been completed, implemented with the first month's results being capable of being measure and adjustments done for the next month. Perhaps it's that life in the communications industry is much more complicated than it has been in the past (true but that did not affect getting 2010 under way on time) but I suspect it is the time delays inherent in sharing decision making more widely to improve the management skills and understanding of Exetel's managers and supervisors.
With one or two,relatively minor, exceptions everything is now in place which is just as well as January is now over and it's hard enough to make financial and sales targets with a full twelve months let alone reducing the time available to eleven months. I'm not sure that it's my rapidly advancing age that makes the time taken to do simple things seem to be becoming less and less - that may be the case. However, I'm more inclined to believe that it is other people's inability to actually do things in, what I would judge to be, a reasonable time frame that is the problem. That is absolutely certainly true with every single one of Exetel's suppliers whose ability to meet even the second or third date for making any mutually required decision is notorious for their inability to do so.
So - what can be done? The only real answer is to involve yourself in activities that are not dependent on other people's fluffing around and inabilities to take responsibility for actually doing anything in a time frame that suits anyone but themselves. Probably too pessimistic a view of humanity generally or Exetel and its associates in particular but very definitely one that I am leaning towards more and more. I don't remember ever having this sort of trouble in the past - and that may be because I have developed ever more demanding standards as business life has become ever more complex and the disconnect between my experience and knowledge has become greater as Exetel's growth has required us to employ more people. That's a futile path to go down because it is a current reality that is not going to be changed by anything under my control.
So, as usual, a person of my age, upbringing and experience blames themselves for the inadequacies they perceive in others and does nothing to remedy what they see are problems in performance of others but sees those issues as being deficiencies in their own abilities. After all we can't find different suppliers for most of our services and there doesn't appear to be any way of speeding up the development of a sense of timeliness in others until they have suffered the consequences of being dilatory enough times to understand why targets and dead lines really do have a need to be met....or it all ends in tears before bed time.
I have a perfect alternative 'job' if only I could find the time to do it.
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