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Crisis Management
“We are different.” I hear this all too often. Of course everybody is different as is every organization. But, at least in the software business, we share a great many common problems. Generally, saying “We’re different” is a way of saying “Don’t bother me, I’m busy.” The two likely reasons for this are that your boss is either a plodder or is too preoccupied with the current crises to think about anything else. With plodders as bosses, you only have two choices: outwait them or leave. The crisis case is when your boss is so enmeshed in the current crises that he or she doesn’t have the time or energy to think about anything else. This is the case most of us need to think about, either as workers trying to get the attention of busy bosses or as bosses who are too busy to think about anything but surviving. This column discusses how to handle such situations so that you can have a reasonable chance of actually starting an improvement effort.