Return of the Living Idiots

Again I am amazed by the people I work for. Today was the major meeting. For the first hour, we introduced ourselves, and then played one of those "team building" games. Then we went on to defining certain terms we all use in the business, but seem to disagree on what they really mean.

The second half of the day we broke into groups. My group of three and one non-voting member had 42 separate items to consider for inclusion in our priority list. After creating our list of 12 "absolutely necessary" items, we then voted on their importance. Final result? Of the 42 obvious major problems with the new system, we picked four that had to be fixed for the next major release.

Kudos to the meeting organizers. We kept on topic, we kept to the schedule, and extraneous bulls**t got pushed back.

But the major problem was the people. For a single company with one product and a consistent public presence, we all seem to do the stuff behind the scenes differently. My retail teammate stocks one frame with so many different options, I'm amazed that she has any turnover. Samples are sent to the stores on the decision of the delivery manager, with no thought of making sure advertised goods are in the store. My IT partner wants things installed as a way of getting projects in his department going, things that won't have the slightest effect on store sales. A buyer in another group will order the same identical piece with five different SKUs, so that each store will get a sample. Ack Ack!

The end result is a horrible compromise of three business systems, unsatisfactory to all.