The Inside Advice

Years ago I was pulled into my managers office when he noticed I was struggling with a large, all important and massively high impact technical decision. I don't remember what the massively high impact technical decision was that had me struggling, but believe me, it was of massively high impact. My manager at the time, one that I didn't really like because of his kind of arrogant Simon Cowell smugness, gave me a bit of advice, and I've always remembered it. He said - "Just make something up, nobody really knows anything". I was floored, and especially because it came from this guy, who despite his smugness, was pretty smart and got quite a bit done. Was he making stuff up all the time, did he just flip a coin when he hired me, was that the level of scrutiny he used? But that was his advice - nobody knows anything. Now I think this originally came from William Goldman, screenwriter for that little film called Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - and the quote was directed at Hollywood directors/producers/executives. But apparently it applied to what I was doing, which again was going to be massively impacting whatever that was.

Now I hope this isn't true everywhere, you know pilots, heart surgeons, my dentist , and the good people at Trojan. But in this Information Technology arena, something tells me nobody really knows anything and the ones you know really don't know anything are the ones that tell you that they know everything - I think they, are completely lost. Now a little caveat, see I don't think this applies to every area in IT, but I would say most. There are those small pockets of true genius, you know that 80/20 rule, 20% do all the work and have all the smarts that thing. Well I think the truth is, that 20 is probably more like 2, 2 as in 2 percent.

But play it out, think about it..kind of true isn't? We manage in a world of ambiguity, things are never really clear, and we have to estimate, there is no certainty and I think that is what he was saying - now I can hear all you Germans saying Dumkopff - that's my other exclusion, Germans, they know what they're doing, I don't know how they do it, but they know, must be from all the chocolate cake they eat.

I found this advice to be kind of freeing until I found out this other little truth. Nobody knows anything except how to ridicule you when you make a decision, then they know, they know you didn't check with accounting on the general ledger accounts, and they know you didn't completely analyze the distribution network for upcoming outages, or that it was Oktoberfest and half the reliable staff would be out or drunk all weekend.

Unfortunately my manager was relieved of his duties about three weeks later and I was promoted to his position, but now I had his little advice stored away in my arsenal available to use at any time. Just make it up, and I have found if you add a little cockiness to it you can go far and get a lot done. One word of caution though, you have to have some thick armor cause you're going to have arrows shot at you all day long. It's much easier to aim for the one that puts his hand up in class and says "Hey I have an idea" than the folks fingering their Blackberry's for the latest Facebook update. Taking that risk will separate you from the pack and make you the target, and trust me one of those arrows will get you someday - but if you're going to do this for a living, why not make it a little more interesting, but hey, what do I know anyway?