Today at work a situation occurred that had it happened to me, you might understand my current frustration. However it happened to a co-worker and it still has me miffed.
It all starts with an email. A poorly worded, extremely divisive and classless email.
There are projects that have all kinds of moving parts. Many different teams working together to make it all happen. There are technical project managers, engineers like me and others all delivering small components that get mashed together to deliver a solution.
An obvious and usually all-important feature of these projects is the timeline. When will it be done? At the beginning of a project you “roughly” outline the time you think it will take to develop, test and deploy the given project. Then everyone involved agrees to some form of that timeline. A second but often overlooked and underestimated feature of projects are the technology choices to fulfill the solution. These technology choices in a large way dictate the timeline.
So this is what happened.
We deployed a project to QA. This means that for the most part the development is done. We are now testing it to make sure it’s all good before it goes public. We (I say “we” because I feel we’re a team, and this is part of my point) then get emails from another team regarding technology choices made. Something to the effect of “I thought we were going to use something different?”
Now this kind of interaction is not atypical. In fact it happens all the time. Well in this case we reply with “well we finalized on this technology, however if you want something else we can discuss it and how it will affect the timeline”. This is the key. When you make changes post development, it costs time. The response we made was tactful and prudent. Simply put we can change whatever you want, but it’s going to take time and the original agreed upon timeline will change. Full Stop.
This is where the story turns and the Us vs. Them part comes in. The response we got from a manager of the other team was as I see it rude and frankly offensive. It went something to the affect of “don’t threaten us with timelines” and “be a team player and try to fix this”. If I were to describe the person who this email was addressed to I would use words like “team player” and “go-to guy”. This guy has single handedly managed all of the projects I have been a part of as well as everyone else around me. And he develops a little bit himself. And he manages all the outside administration. He does it all. And with a smile.
The managers email made me recoil. I stood up and said “where does he get the balls to talk to you like that?”. This person – the one who the email was addressed to – said nothing. He smiled at me and shrugged his shoulders.
I was fit to be tied. Who is this guy to imply that my guy wasn’t a team player? And where does he think we’re threatening him with timelines? It seemed to me a total over-reaction and a terrible, terrible way to respond to a otherwise innocuous email.
I hesitated to respond with my own smart ass remark such as “you stay classy”. Even worse I thought to storm down there and tell this guy how off base he was and ask him if had a fucking clue what he was talking about.
But I didn’t. I didn’t because my guy didn’t. It was his business to take care of so I kept my mouth shut.
Here is the big point I’m trying to make.
Leaders (managers like this one) need to realize that all of their communication, spoken or written, need to be worded in a way to avoid causing division. In this example there was an immediate schism. Now we have to work with this manager to deliver a solution and honestly I will always think he’s an ass because of this. Without ever having really met him my mind is made up that he is complete and utter douche. I’m a professional and will never ambush my team with some form of sabotage. But I will continue to hold this manager in a cross-hair.
Communication is hard. It’s especially hard when it’s in email. There’s no body language or inflection that would help you to understand the attitude the writer has when they wrote it. Maybe this manager was joking. Maybe he was giving my guy a sharp reminder. Regardless of his intentions, his words communicated offensive division. I tend to believe in Hanlon’s Razor: never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
I tend to respect authority (barely). But I go cold with animosity when authority is stupid.
Us vs. Them.