Star report 19

Observer Guto’s log, entry 7 [next report, 9 July 2008]

Name of Subject: Peter Anderson

Gender: male

Age in terrestrial years: 42

Occupation: Global Account Manager

Name of organisation: GLOB

As you remember, the first face-to-face meeting of the Global Account Team back in May was not wholly successful, and at the moment the managers remain as suspicious of each other as they are of Peter, their boss.

Peter’s problem is that he is acting in his new job at GLOB in exactly the same way that he did in his last one at PITS, which in Earth terms is about as appropriate as speaking Bhutanese to a Pole.* He performed well in his previous role as an Account Manager because he was dealing with people very like himself - English, male and middle-aged. However in his present role as manager of managers he has to lead people of different ages, genders and cultures, and he is finding it hard going. Before he joined GLOB, when he spoke or wrote to colleagues, customers or subordinates, he could take it for granted that they would understand what he meant, even if he did not spell things out.* They all knew, without thinking about it, how far they could trust each other, they could predict how their fellows would act in most situations, and above all they understood what needed saying and what did not. Now none of the old certainties applies and the thought probe has revealed that Peter is becoming increasingly aware that he is out of his depth.

He has been told by the Vice-President, Ivor, that in order to increase global sales he needs to create a vision and strategy for future growth, as well as uniting his account team and getting them to work together towards common objectives. Unfortunately for Peter, what he is good at is creating good customer relations, not leading a culturally diverse team of highly ambitious, competitive individuals who know more about their own markets than he does. Nor has he got any talent for dealing with the abstract, so asking him to work to, “produce a vision of the future, and a strategy for attaining it,” is like asking a Zippo fish from the Warble constellation to grow hair. (It’s not that the Zippo fish doesn’t like hair, just that hair-growing is not included in its evolutionary design specifications.)

As Peter does not have the faintest idea of how to go about producing a vision – let alone writing it down – he has decided to delegate the task to his Account Team. After many hours deliberation here is the email he sent to his managers:

All:

In order to achieve optimal client focus, corporate HQ has challenged us to produce a best-of-breed sales strategy. Leveraging the strengths inherent in our diversity, our team will create a TEFSY (template for synergy) which will prioritise high-value deliverables for our clients. This in turn will enhance corporate value going forward, and strengthen our favoured partner status. In short, we are looking for a targeted, scaleable, win-win sales scenario.

Hope to get your responses soon.

Regards

Peter

PS If you could send me your ideas for a departmental vision and strategy by the end of next week, I’d appreciate it. No more than 2000 words please!

As can be seen, despite Peter’s weakness when it comes to strategic thinking, his use of obscure and impressive robizz* is second to none. Like most people he uses it most frequently when he wants to create the (false) impression that he understands what he is writing about.

His managers, being familiar with robizz, and knowing full well how Peter works, understood that what he really meant was this:

Corporate HQ has given me the thankless task of producing a report which will take a long time to write and will never be implemented. As I don’t want to do it, and don’t know how to even if I did, I’m passing the job on to you.

I am actually getting rather worried about Peter. He is finding it difficult to meet Ivor’s expectations, and because of his lack of communication and intercultural skills, finds it impossible to get his team to cooperate with him or each other. As a result he is also working longer and longer hours, which has led his wife to complain that their three young children are beginning to forget what he looks like. Soon, however, he will be going on holiday , and is hoping that two weeks spent in the company of wife, children and golf clubs will provide him with the rest and relaxation which he so sorely needs. As I observed previously, Peter is obviously not a clear thinker – but he is very clearly an optimist.

Explanations and comments

*speaking Bhutanese to a Pole: In most cases this is of no discernible use at all.

*spell things out : Not literally. He did not actually have to spell “things,” or any other words, out loud.

*robizz: The sort of English you would use if you had to address a reasonably intelligent robot. i.e. There is no indication in the speech or writing to reveal that the message has been generated by a living creature, nor that either the writer or the intended recipient belongs to a species which puts any value on social competence.