August 14, 2002
Dear Everyone:
Several things are coming to an end at work. The Conversion Project to the “new” Records Management system was officially completed last week when the Project Manager took all of the (Bay Area) Team Members to lunch and presented each of us with a gift bag containing, the latest version of the latest craze in “motivational practices”, a cute magnet and an R&A (Recognition & Award) certificate and plaque. The certificate was the most important thing, since it meant extra money in your next paycheck.
And our Operating Company vice president gave each of us business card holders.
The end to another project looks to be less magnanimous. Remember that Move/Add/Change project that I got roped into just about exactly one year ago? The software was going to solve all the problems endemic to large (as in several hundred people at a time) “managed moves”. Well, for a number of reasons, that software is on its way out the door.
One reason is that the company that sells it is currently on tumble-dry and is selling the product to another company as part of an attempt to get their financial feet under themselves again. And any annual costs would be coming up, since this is the one-year anniversary of the product purchase. So now might be a good time to cut our losses.
But there is another reason why the software never really worked the way it was intended: The people who were supposed to use it didn’t want to use it. They liked the “old way” better. Sure, there were problems with the “old way”, but there were plenty of problems with using the “new” system as well.
This is a classic example of management choosing a technology and “dumping” it on people’s heads, expecting them to just jump at the chance to use it. As a general rule, people don’t like that. We learned this lesson about eight or nine years ago when we introduced a new Records Management system and got hosed by the end-customers in “Hobby”.
They wanted to know why they hadn’t been consulted before we changed everything without their permission. It didn’t matter that the team that had come up with the new system was comprised of over 50% end-customers. Those end-customers were in the Bay Area, not “Hobby”.
So, the next time it looked like we were going to
have to change systems again, we invited customers from all over the
country to come and see the proposed alternatives.
Faced with a company-paid trip to
So the move management software will be decommissioned probably by the end of this month, if not sooner.
And no sooner did my supervisor learn of this than she decided that I could be helpful with a project that’s going on in “Hobby”. So I’ll be spending the last week in August in “Hobby”, first for an electronic records conference, then to help with an active records project. The good news is, it’s the last week, so I won’t have to miss my Homeowners Association Board meeting for the third time in a row.
In other news…
“Jeannie” was busy this past weekend, so I went to see Signs by myself. This is the latest film from M. Night Shyamalan, the director of The Sixth Sense. In the earlier movie, Shyamalan was blessed with an extremely well-written script and an exceptionally gifted young actor. This time, he has a less-than-stellar script and Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix.
As a director, Shyamalan understands what Steven Spielberg found out by accident when filming Jaws: What you can’t see is more frightening than what you can see, no matter how scary it may be. So there’s lots of scary things moving in the dark and little, or no explanations for strange happenings.
This goes on for a while, with intermittent pieces of a back-story about how Mel’s character lost his faith in God, until the final showdown. And, like Panic Room, there always has to be some medical problem that will force people out of the safe place to confront the monster.
It kind of falls apart at the end, rather like War of the Worlds, with a fairly lame reason for the good guys winning. But so what? Do you need a better reason to sit in the air-conditioned dark on a blistering hot August afternoon?
Love, as always,
Pete
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