Cred

In the last post I wrote a little bit about how I see one of my roles as the middleman in communication between upper management and everybody else.  The honchos tend to speak differently.  A skilled communicator (and you don’t get to the upper echelons without people believing that you are one) realizes that the language and sometimes even the cadence are totally different than that of, say, regular guys in middle management.  They obviously love buzzwords, and buzzwords convey little to the techs and operators.  At the gulag they loved EBITDA, you know, earnings before interest, taxes, blah blah blah.  I never ever heard a tech say the acronym.  Never.  They could not possibly care less.  But, if I wanted to communicate with an upper manager and have them understand it I would use lots of buzzwords (and lots of very short words to fill in).  In a way it’s a sellout, because buzzwords are a crutch and I’m not a crutch kind of guy.  The only reason I did it was because a) I wanted them to understand what the heck I wanted, and b) it’s the best way to get credibility.  If you don’t have cred you aint got nothin’.

Our CEO has been very explicit about his requests for information.  If he asks a question, he wants the following types of answers:

• Yes
• No
• I don’t know, but I will find the answer and get back to you or tell you why it is unknown.
• 14

BTW the last one is merely his way of passing on that if 1, 2 or 3 aren’t sufficient he wants an exact answer to whatever he asked, though it’s a subset of “yes”.

Inherent in the protocol is a strict prohibition against speculation.  If you start off a sentence with “I think…” he will firmly cut you off, remind you of the four answers and then inquire as to why you are so stupid that you cannot perform as he has requested.  (OK I added the last bit.)   I can usually get away with using “I think…” because I try to turn it into an I-don’t-know along the lines of “I think the problem is X but I need to do some research on it and I’ll let you know if the problem is actually Y.”  Linguistically speaking, the use of “I think…” gives the speaker a chance to appear to be knowledgeable when they really aren’t.  It’s freaking rampant in the American lexicon.  It’s beginning to become a pet peeve of mine.  But anyway…

The genesis of this rant is one of our process engineers.  He’s a nice guy, intelligent and hard working.  He fancies himself as a good communicator, but only because his mouth rarely rests.  The sight of him coming through my door is about as welcome as seeing the shirt come off a 400 pound man during “Cotton-Eyed Joe”.  I know I’m in for a long conversation when a short one would suffice, and have I mentioned my time is a treasured resource?  This would be OK except for problem #2 – he does not read non-verbal clues.  I have tried the following: get back to work on my computer (keeps talking); pick up my phone as if to call someone (keeps talking); even getting up out of my chair (keeps talking).  Since I am part of a learning organization, I have deduced that I either need to tell him to get to the point, tell him to shut the hell up and get the eff out, or leave.  Though the last one is not foolproof – I have returned after a sojourn to find him still holding down one of my chairs.  Fortunately he resorts to silence when alone. 

Even these flaws could be overcome, except he loves to use “I think…” when he isn’t sure or has no clue.  Now it’s a huge problem.  Add all the previous information up (I’ll give you a second) and you will come to the conclusion that our process engr has no cred with the CEO, and you’d be right. 

This isn’t my problem, right?  In fact, it’s a positive boon.  If he looks bad, then I look good in comparison.  Hooray for me.

Except…  If you stop and think about it, there are a couple reasons compelling me to try to help him.  I don’t want the poor guy to fail.  Yes, he’s a pain in the butt, though on a scale of butt-ness he isn’t far from the top of the curve.  At least he tries and wants to succeed.  Effort is worth something. 

The importance here is that he presents information on my behalf, on behalf of the whole team, the whole plant.  Have you ever seen a case where a manager takes one data point and uses it to draw conclusions?  What if the CEO takes this data point and uses it to draw the conclusion that everyone at the plant is a blithering idiot, and what if I have to overcome that notion every time I want to get a point across to him?  I already have a steep hill, because often CEOs and upper-level managers come through operations and have disdain for engineering and maintenance anyway, as is the case here.  It’s better for the whole team if the CEO believes he is getting a good, accurate story from all of us so that all of us have cred.  And recall if you don’t have cred you aint got nothin’…  We’ve all got to have it or none of us will have it.