Dark Thoughts

What is it with absent managers wanting to make decisions (irrational ones at that) from absentia? Shooting from the hip without being armed with all the facts.

Why do mining company's insist on having the headoffice, so far removed from the actual place where the work is being done. It creates confusion and duplication of many of the personnel and functions. It's not condusive to efficient flow of information and the managers still want to micromanage the workers as if they were on site.

An example is the commissioning project we want to do. We have two sources of liquor that we can use for the project but one of the managers doesn't want to use either of them. So somehow we have to pump liquor into the plant from nowhere...

The managers are all in their cushy offices away from the site where the workers on the ground are busting their butts to get it all finished and running, and we get these decisions out of left field. There are substantial delays with procuring equipment at the best of times, but when purchase requests have to be beamed half way around the world to get a signature, it adds considerably to the delay time, and we cop the flack for delaying the project.

Grrrrr....

If I ever get to the level of power in such an organization I'd move the entire office to site, so that problems can be dealt with there and then. If a presence is required in a city for whatever reason, it will be as small as possible but everything will be run, from the site where the money is being made.

Sure it will put a few accountants, and lawyers out of their comfort zones, but it's completely necessary. Those people (particularly the safety department) need to be on the ground. They need to know what is being ordered and why. If they are on site then they can immediately see that we need the widget to join these two pipes together or we're going to make a mighty big mess. There's nothing to debate. It's required. No option. No need for a discussion panel. The $10 you might save by ringing around is more than lost by the wages of people sitting around twiddling their thumbs and lost production.

Just get a friggin widget and now. I don't care where from, and I don't care what it costs, but I need it, and I need it now.

Sure, cost control is important, and if it's that important then get your stock control system working properly so that we don't have the necessity for reactive purchasing.

Blah

This is a frustrating job. Especially when decisions are being made without any information at all. There are no basis for the figures, and no-one has bothered to check if the assumptions are valid.

Speaking of assumptions, I had a long SMS conversation with Jodie last night about that very thing. Challenging the assumptions that you make in your life. Whether they be the dimensions of a slab of concrete or how we think people perceive us. If we don't verify our assumptions then EVERYTHING, every decision, every calculation that we base on them is in jeapordy of being wrong.

We don't go building a house without checking the stability of the ground and the quality of the concrete pad, otherwise there is the danger that the whole thing could come crumbling down. So it is with everything. It's the primary reason why I've been having so many problems with spreadsheets and calculations. I made the wrong assumption that the data provided to me was correct. In reality, this was far from the case, and the more I check, the more inconsistencies and false data I uncover.

I'm in the process of evaluating these assumptions, so that hopefully, I can base my results and recommendations on something real, rather than something, that some remote control micromanager has pulled out of thin air.