A Strong Hand

Those of you who don't already know, I will be playing Russia in the IAEA in the upcoming NTUMUN 2008. It is particularly interesting when one is allowed to simply play the arrogant son of a mother in the room and actually have it be considered a necessary part of the simulation. I am not saying Russian foreign policy is inherently arrogant and son-of-a-gun-ish but recent performance has been particularly indicative of an aggressive nation. Though strangely enough, our goals seem largely to line up with those of the USA on the issue of nuclear proliferation, but can and probably will be expected to put our own stamp on the proceedings. Its interesting isn't it, to see how I can play this out.

A strong hand is needed in any activity being conducted, and one has been a witness of the lack of such clarity recently. It is regarding the organisation of a particular event, and in the run up of the events, one must provide a public presentation. However, it seems people have got it into their heads that this task can be accomplished by asking certain unqualified people to provide for and somehow create a great looking presentation, something on the level of what one could get from the outside is simply not plausible.

It seemed like somehow the creative process was to be outsourced to one of the drunk monkeys typing away trying to create Shakespeare's writings, the duck that sits next to it quacking, and a hippo that dwells in a waterhole, (Though these animals are very tech savvy, thus fulfilling the cool factor) and the expectation was of a professional, well designed, under cost presentation. Somehow, it got into the heads of management that these animals are design gods who can in one single stroke, provide the marketing for a multi-million Hollywood movie, launch 2 operating systems for profit and create the marketing campaign for half a dozen Apple products. One may laugh, but the truth of the matter is, there's nothing and everything is somehow expected. The phrase "ask the animals, they're really good at such things, one" has been heard repeatedly, and yet somehow, if these gods were so good, why are their designs periodically disregarded and given over to others to design, or worse, watered down.

Its almost as if there is this compulsive need to obtain something just so that one can have something to reject, and if it was to accepted and were then to fail, the monkey, hippo and duck can take the fall. One has to beg the question, why can't they have just outsourced this entire project in the first place, it would have removed the compulsive need to micromanage (truly the biggest problem), and the whole layers of bureaucracy problem. May we also add lastly that the instructions for this endeavour was not passed on directly from the top to the design "team" but through 3 or more levels of bureaucracy. One cannot understand is why such things even need to be evaluated at the very top, this is not for the people at the "top", it is for those with no clue at all what is going on in the first place, so is it not true that those at the top cannot provide objective evaluation.

It is unfortunate though, that one shall not be the only person who would ever go through such examples of human behavior; somehow everyone will have undergo it at some point. Such are the symptoms of management.