Regression

Today, I'm going to talk about regression. No, not linear regression but people regression.

Earlier in the year, I had trained someone to take over the Monday morning reporting so I could move on to other things. Well, last week she left for another job - a very good job, by the way, with some meaty tasks. She was an executive assistant so this new job will be a huge step up. And this past Monday, it was like the site managers had regressed. A lot of them left the work to me or just panicked and stop trying to solve the issues.

This was a reminder that every once in a while, some people will regress and you need to be the manager. Get out that whip and crack 'em! I had to stop and remind myself that these site managers are no different from the project managers I had to deal with when I was at SAIC. You would think project managers, or consultants would be mature enough to do the tasks that would ensure project success. But no, some were just arrogant and thought they didn't need to do the usual project management activities. The non-consultant type project managers tended to have better success on their projects, but they usually were not grand marketers. They were more on the phlegmatic side. The consultants, on the other hand, were grand salesmen, but they had problems delivering the projects. Which is why some did not last long in the company.

So my boss and I are back to pushing and pulling them to do what they should be doing as managers.