May 31 2007
Back Officed
To give you some idea as to what goes behind the scenes in our firm, let me describe some of our back office functions. We have team assistants (still proudly called secretaries in Germany), a graphics pool to pretty up our PowerPoint, training department to plan and coordinate training programs, staffing to ensure we're always overworked, people development / hiring to keep the pipeline of indentured servants full, the typical Dilbert-esque IT, and the knowledge base (KB) department, the subject of today's lesson. An understaffed and overworked team of roughly 8 people, the team provides an essential function. With the power of the Internet, news services, and databases full of past project learning's and consultancy voodoo (aka methodology) at their fingertips, they wield the responsibility of supporting the busy-bee consultants by performing research and providing relevant information.
For my current project, we are researching and analyzing the competition. Naturally, my project leader suggests we lean on the folks down in the KB for some support. The idea is having them collect all the past news articles related to the industry and the competition over the last few years, and dump them on a shared drive. That way, when we consultants feel bored in our stress-less, 9 to 5 day jobs, we can generate much “ah-ha!” insight while reading through this material. Heck, some of us even prefer to read said articles on long international flights instead of other useless tasks like watching movies, reading fiction, or the unmentionable activity known as sleep. So much time on a plane and so little to do. So why not ask our supportive staff to facilitate us, or more precisely, why don't I take the responsibility of making it happen?
Several weeks back, I put the wheels in motion. I made the request and KB gladly accepted. But after generating hundreds of hits on the search query, they decided that it was unfeasible, and they had no alternative solutions. I thought about it and settled on a compromise: just provide the headlines of every article along with the full text of a very small subset of the articles, using their good judgment on which ones to download. So in the many cases where I get bored on the plane, I can read these articles, and when I eventually plow through them, I can scan the headlines and pick the interesting ones out for future download. Ingenious!
Somehow they didn't think too much of my solution and my request got lost. But project leaders don't get where they are with poor memories. Some time last week, after our fearless leader expressed disappointment to the consultant about the lack of progress on this, I was inspired to action. I pushed hard to get this completed, but my urgency was dashed. The reply I received with the refusal was, “we're too busy.” Summoning my boundless patience, I acknowledged their burden and agreed to wait. But they would have to reserve capacity to support me in the following week. I don't care how many knowledge base hours it would take, just reserve the necessary time for me and mark it down on the little calendar back in Munich.
Today, I receive an email indicating confusion and lack of direction. Of course my month-long request is unclear, especially since I lack the fine skill of clear communication. So I called, to convey, explain, and articulate. They told me it couldn't be done. I pushed back. They said it didn't make sense for them to do it, and that I should do it myself. I pushed back again, and they finally relented, but it would take days. Fine, I already had them reserve the capacity for me last week anyways.
Within 45 minutes, an email arrives, proclaiming that it was done. I was pleasantly shocked and as content as a caffeine-wired consultant could be. Alas, naive me, setting myself up for disappointment like that, believing before seeing. I checked the work, it wasn't complete. They only downloaded the headlines but not the articles. Once again, I called and listened to their bewilderment at my unusual request. “Why retrieve some articles, and which ones? How would we know what you want to read?” I brushed aside the concerns and insisted that we absolutely needed it. They weren't happy and dubiously expressed the utility of my request, even complaining that their previous good work (all of 45 minutes worth) was all for naught! Not true and I didn't care, “Just do it!” The skeptical and very reluctant KB promised it would take days, weeks even. But since they were so kind, they offered the possibility of working evenings to support such an unreasonable demand. I had already reached the point of indifference, as long as it was in the works.
To my astonishment, around 8pm Munich time, I got an email saying they were done, and they really were. They must've worked really hard, like 3 hours straight. So twice in one day they over-delivered by under-promising the delivery times and exaggerating the effort involved. And though I am grateful, just a little, that they finally completed the project, even working very late by German standards, I am left with the sense of dissatisfaction. I'm incredulous at the requisite explaining, bargaining, begging, demanding. How about some support without the hem haw? Life is just too short. Good thing there's always time on the plane.
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