![[Columbine]](columbine.gif)
Columbine- Peeve of Channels
Have you ever tried to get a Big Company to do anything? If not, you don't know what it's like. Columbine does.
Suppose you work at a Big Company. You want to wipe your butt, but there's no toilet paper in the bathroom. So you ask the maintenance people to start having toilet paper in the bathrooms. Now, you'd think that they'd get some toilet paper, and you'd wipe your butt, and everybody would be happy.
This is not what takes place.
What actually happens is this...
The first person who gets your request recognizes it as beyond her authority, because, after all, you're asking her to commit the company to an ongoing policy of stocking toilet paper, which could expose the bottom line (so to speak...). So she kicks it upstairs to her manager.
When the manager gets the thing, she springs into action. Being efficient, she starts out on two fronts at once--
An appropriately constituted task force, of course, represents all the major stakeholders. This one has representatives from--
First task force meeting. The team's first order of business, as we all know, is definition of its charter.
You call the team the Anal Task Force, or "ATF".
After the first 2 weekly meetings, the chair produces a written charter and circulates it to the team members and to the convening manager for review. The convening manager has some concerns about the scope of the team's authority, and refers it to her boss for comment. The boss promises to take it up with the vice president at the same time as the strategic direction issue... probably at the next monthly staff meeting.
After missing one meeting, the team decides to forge ahead based on its "working charter". The plan is to deliver a report containing a brief description of the problem, short descriptions of the major possible solutions, and an in-depth analysis of a single, recommended solution. The Finance representative will serve as document editor. Each team member will research part of the problem space.
At this point, your butt is starting to itch pretty badly, so you ask for a quick reading on the possibility of your bringing in a toilet roll from home as a stopgap measure. The team discusses the pros and cons for an hour or so, but the final word comes from the Legal department. Allowing employees to bring in personal wiping supplies is just too much of an exposure... you need to have a defined policy so you can show that you're meeting EOP regulations.
Each person reports her research results, and you start brainstorming for solutions. The meeting runs 3 hours, but at the end you have the beginnings of an approach. You're planning to go with tried-and-true TP technology; you feel that personal hygiene is too far from your company's core competency to risk any of the newer, untried solutions. You agree that this question should be revisited in a couple of years, when the technology has matured. The issue of outsourcing remains unresolved; requests for information are sent to possible anal hygiene partners.
The document editor swings into action, and within a couple of days the first draft of the document is circulated for review. This is a progressive company, so it's an electronic document, in corporate standard Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet format. Unfortunately, most of the team can't read the Finance department's standard 8-inch CP/M floppy disk format. You're all pretty sure that the corporate e-mail system can handle Lotus files, but nobody's sure how to make it do so. The team chair takes the action item to check with MIS on document dissemination procedures. In the meantime, the Finance person rushes out a printed version of the document.
After a couple of review cycles and some discussions at meetings, the document looks to be ready for wider dissemination. The team decides that it's time to involve more stakeholders, who've been identified during meetings. The document goes out for review by--
A friend relays a rumor that there's toilet paper in one of the bathrooms over in the Manufacturing department. You go over there, and discover that it's not strictly true... but a "skunk works" project there has bred mutant butt-licking lemurs; each person in the department gets her own. You send out a voice mail message informing the other task force members.
The task force decides to invite the person who set up the system in Manufacturing to become a full member. After all, she has an installed base to worry about... and she obviously has real-world experience with a workable solution. In the light of the existing, hitherto unknown investment the company has made in lemurs, you may need to reconsider your commitment to paper-based technology. The meeting is cut short because of lack of returned document reviews and a feeling that not all the players are present.
It has now been 3 months since your initial request. You tend to move around a lot in your chair.
The HR representative announces that her director feels it's best to take a survey to determine employee preferences in anal hygiene technology, rather than dictating the use of toilet paper from above. She cautions that the survey shouldn't create the impression that employee preferences were the only consideration. The HR rep takes the action item to work with MIS to create a survey using the internal Worldwide Web system.
MIS suggests you convert the report to Electric Pencil 1.2 format to bring it into better alignment with emerging corporate standards. The editor will look into it.
Customer service will install phones in their bathrooms to avoid any impact on response time. They've already placed the orders.
Marketing doesn't think it's necessary to print the logo on the toilet paper, but they send a list of possible Pantone numbers to make sure it matches the new internal color scheme.
The remainder of the meeting is taken up by the new member's presentation of her lemur-based system. It has promise, but there are rough edges and serious scaling questions... deploying it company-wide would require supporting more than 50 times as many lemurs as are presently in use; the feeding and stabling problems become significant. There's also the question of lemur logistics... if an employee uses a different bathroom than she usually does, how is her lemur kept in the loop? Forcing employees to use specific bathrooms might be perceived as a take-away. Lemur sharing, while a possibility, raises its own set of issues... would the employees accept it?
Nobody says anything directly, but there are signs that some of the stronger paper partisans in the group may not be willing to consider the lemur option at all, even if the scaling questions can be addressed.
The team consensus is that the next couple of meetings should be cancelled, pending the results of the employee survey.
The HR representative sends out the survey results via e-mail. Of 521 employees responding, 151 prefer to wipe with paper, 155 prefer lemurs, 50 prefer bidets, 50 are unsure, and 100 don't care. The verbatims are mostly concerned with child care, dental benefits, and the 401K plan. Several employees want to be able to reinvest unused toilet paper "credits" in their 401K accounts.
The team meets to discuss the survey results and determine the next step. The HR and Finance representatives are assigned to study the 401K issue.
When the discussion gets around to actual cleaning methods, the meeting turns partisan, with some people strongly supporting paper, and some supporting lemurs. The team chair takes the action item to find processes for building a true consensus.
A management consultant is brought in, and the next two meetings are spent in team-building and negotiation exercises.
The consultant offers to act as a mediator. With her help, the team develops an innovative hybrid paper-lemur approach... you let the lemur clean your butt, then you dry off the spit with toilet paper.
Still no word from management. You call the convening manager and ask her what's going on. She says the matter is before the executives.
The convening manager gets a call from the Legal department director, who wants to know what the story is on this plan she just got from the CEO. Has it been reviewed? It looks pretty iffy, especially on the animal cruelty issue. She's reminded that she has a representative on the team. Your Legal representative spends a week researching animal cruelty law, and writes a report saying that the company's exposure is moderate at worst; the lemurs are unhappy if they don't get to lick butts.
A copy of the plan comes back from the CEO, and the team chair routes it to everybody. There are three comments written on it:
Most people have scheduled other things in the old team time slot, so it takes a while to schedule a meeting.
Team meeting. You agree that you need to revise the report to address the executive comments. The consensus is that the existing investment in lemurs makes them the preferred choice... also, you think they have larger tongues than the monkeys. The basic business case is there in terms of efficiency, employee turnover, and upholstery life; the Finance representative volunteers to flesh it out, since she's the document editor anyway. The team chair offers to write up a consulting services request for an outside doctor to review the plan, and the HR representative will work with the benefits people to find candidate reviewers. You agree to meet again in two weeks to go over a revised document.
Everything looks good. You have the new text in the proposal. The medical report is positive, with a strong warning about not sharing lemurs. There's a message of congratulation to the team from the convening manager for having the foresight to discard the lemur-sharing idea early on. The maintenance representative has proactively identified several commercial lemur breeders.
You agree that the best way to make sure there are no further hitches is to make a direct presentation to the executives. You will prepare the slides, and the team chair will do the actual presentation; she'll work through her management to get you on the executive calendar. Since you're now in the home stretch, the HR representative suggests that you have "ATF" T-shirts made-- everybody agrees, and she takes the action item to have the shirts designed and printed. You come up with a brown-on-white logo concept for the designers to work from.
Executive presentations are created with ColorSlideMaker II from ObscureSoft. Nobody in your department has a copy, and nobody can lend you the use of one, so you fill out a purchase request. The application only costs $595, so your manager can sign for it, and she lets you use a little of her slush fund... after all, it's always a good idea to have a copy of the presentation software in your department somewhere.
By pulling strings with the task force's Purchasing representative, you get the order out in only three weeks, and you have the software in hand a week after that. It won't run on your computer, so you borrow one from a coworker and work at night.
The software comes in. It's version 5, and the rest of the company is on version 4. You spend 6 hours converting the company logo and presentation templates.
You finish the presentation, and send it to your manager and the maintenance manager for review. They have no comments. You're on the executive calendar for November 15; you have 15 minutes.
You're told that your time has been cut to 10 minutes because of urgent issues. Also, your boss thinks it's probably a good idea to add a live lemur demo, since many of the executives will probably be unfamiliar with lemurs. You go over to Manufacturing to see if you can borrow a photogenic lemur, and you use up some favors with people in Creative Services to get them to make you a large papier-maché butt. You call a vendor and get them to lend you a roll of toilet paper for the demo. You quickly rework the presentation by eliminating some of the discussion of high-technology alternatives, and the section on the history of anal hygiene.
You pre-stage the demo. Unfortunately, the lemur is confused by the papier-maché, and the demo doesn't work. You make a panic call to the lemur's owner and ask if she can make it to the presentation. She has to skip a staff meeting, but she can get there. You devise a privacy screen for her out of bedsheets. You tell her you owe her lunch.
Your presentation is first of the day, so it starts right on time. You wait around near the conference room in case there are technical problems with the demo. There aren't any. The ATF chair says the presentation was very successful, with numerous sympathetic comments and questions from the executives. You hope to hear something from management within a couple of weeks.
You notice people putting up shower curtains in the parking lot.
A status report comes in from the team chair: your proposal has been adopted, but the executives wanted to make one minor change. As your report mentioned, lemur spit is somewhat sticky and occasionally might not be completely removed by drying with toilet paper. In the interest of a world-class solution, they decided that a water wash of the sort discussed on page 22 of your report should be added to the process, between the lemur licking and the toilet paper wipe.
Bidets would be expensive and time-consuming to install, but the executives have been able to leverage business relationships to reduce costs. Your VP of Marketing is also a director of Gardex, Inc, a dynamic, growing manufacturer of garden hoses, sprinklers, and related equipment. Gardex will provide a hose/sprinkler based butt wash in the parking lot outside each bathroom; the washes will be installed by the end of this week. The bathroom walls will be knocked down to provide access to the hoses.
The executives have also produced a list of departments to be given priority in system deployment; your department is in the middle.
You get a $100 bonus for your "stellar work with the Anal Task Force".
The plan is deployed in your department. That's when you find out about your lemur allergy.
Columbine thinks this speaks for itself. Just be grateful you don't work for the government.