Virgil

Take the high road and try not to demean the situation with anger. I mean this as a friend. You'll feel bad about it later I assure you and probably worse then Bob will. Yes I suspect he'll be a defending type--if it's working what's the problem. Hang in there.

First of all, fabulous entry. Second, you better watch Bob!!! Maybe you might want to check out Spy Site before you go to the meeting. Or have some neutral party sit in on the meeting. It might be a good idea. Maybe you could put some "accounting" control in place with the vendor and with the employees at your company, and only a company approved "buyer" or procurement agent could finalize any arrangements with this vendor to produce any more of their molds. And as part of the control, the buyer has to obtain your approval. This could prevent Bob and other Bob-type personalities from making any agreements with this vendor or any vendor. As part of the contract, the vendor would agree to your company's terms of sale, which require that invoices/orders be linked to a purchase order generated by someone from your purchasing department. If a work order goes through without a purchase order, then any invoices are null and void. I.E. - if Bob goes and places an order with the company without a purchase order, then your company does not have to pay for it. Is your firm large or small? I guess Bob would find a way to go around the control. The Bob's of the world always do.

I hope that things will resolve themselves soon. I'm no help with controling your temper. Mine would have gone long ago, so I commend you for hanging in there this long. Take Care, Meg

Thanks guys. Rich, yes it is best if I control my temper. I should be able to. Not sure I consider him a friend but I don't want to screw his career, even though he deserves it. Shalot, actually Bob wanted to talk to me and my technical lead. And he is bringing someone from his office. So this will not just be the two of us. Yes there are contractual things we can do but once an R&D project is screwed up, then funding for the project doesn't come back easily. Meg, I know, it's trying.

You have been generous with handling this Bob in a professional manner thus far, Virgil; do not lose your cool at this meeting. For then this fellow will make you out to be 'the bad guy' when the problem goes to the next higher-ups. I am curious to know what the hey the guy has to say to you, does he sweet talk his way up the work ladder and that is how he stays where he is? A guy like that is totally dangerous to the rest of your work team. And where does he get off? He doesn't realize that the others are actually covering for him because he is worthless? Hmmmm .... difficult one indeed, Virgil -- but don't lose your cool, promise me, kay? Good luck to you, K♥zzo

I hope things go well today, Virgil. And you're the right one here, so don't hesitate to fire back at his defence, but without losing your temper. Good Luck.

I hope that it all works out for you and that all goes well . Sounds like rather an unfortunate situation for you to be in.

Youch! I'm curious Virgil, why didn't you speak to Bob individually in the first place? If everyone in the team knows the decision was made by Bob then what you did in the first place was give him a public dressing down which doesn't make it easy to get to the root of the why's and how's the decision was taken, and how to prevent it again. People issues are difficult, but perhaps when you've spoken to him it'll be easier to deal with. That's what I tend to find, generally. He may have a good reason, though if you're angry it might be hard to keep an open mind. Try not to take it personally, I guess would be my advice, ask him open questions, ask him to put himself in your shoes and think about the kind of problems his actions might have caused for you. Ask him, if he had to approach it again, what would he do differently? Or maybe you've already had your chat and this advice is now meaningless? Anyhow, good luck, hope it goes well. Speaking with my management head on, if you escalated this to me, I would be asking you to consider what you could do differently to prevent a similar situation occuring in the future. Bear that in mind if you're escalating (or perhaps you don't need to, perhaps management styles are different in US! )

Wow, I wasn't sure this entry would generate interest. Thanks everyone.

Originally Posted by Fifth

Youch! I'm curious Virgil, why didn't you speak to Bob individually in the first place? If everyone in the team knows the decision was made by Bob then what you did in the first place was give him a public dressing down which doesn't make it easy to get to the root of the why's and how's the decision was taken, and how to prevent it again. People issues are difficult, but perhaps when you've spoken to him it'll be easier to deal with.

I was a little inaccurate in the entry. When i wrote the first email I did not know it was Bob who gave them the go ahead. We thought it was the vendor taking it upon themselves once again. I did not start out isolating Bob, but shortly after I sent that message out I found out what happened. And then he instead of calling me directly replied to my message with a "reply all." But I'm actually glad it happened this way. Bob has been a problem from the beginning. He has no management skills whatsoever. The way he puts together schedules and then follows them (or lack of) is a mish mash. Like I've said I've had to redirect a couple of engineers to essentially run his area. Not only that he and his coworker take up two full manyears of pay. In a research project with a limited budget that's a lot, and I'm running into a budget crunch. Between the two of them I don't think i get a half manyear's worth of effort. When we finally finalized the design of that component, i asked Bob for a summary chart so that we can document what we did, for posterity so that when a similar idea comes down the road again we won't have to reinvent the wheel. That was back in March. Do you think he's provided it? No. Every week it's reviewed as an action on our weekly meetings, and every week he has an excuse. This amounts to a few hours worth of work. Yeah his mother hada stroke and then passed away in April. I let it slide then. Plus when we finalized the molding process, his coworker (who answers to him) was responsible for ducumenting it. That was May. Do you think he sent that out? He sent it out last week when I got testy at our weekly meeting that it wasn't out yet. And to top this all, when the major test took place at the end of June, these two didn't show up at the test facility until 10 o'clock every day. They said, "we know that nothing starts at a test before then." They forget there were software issues that required troubleshooting and the team was brainstorming around the clock. How much effort did they put into that brainstorm? None. They are useless and I want to get rid of them. I don't know if there are management style issues. We have various approaches. I've been more than tolerant of Bob for over a year. You're right, once this gets elevated, amangement will probably make me work it out, but if enough sh*t flies, some of it will stick to Bob.

I hope things go smoothly today. A poor work ethic is hard to deal with. I think it has to be instilled in a person when they are young. I doubt he changes, but maybe he’ll stay within a well established boundary.

Ah, I see. Thanks for the explanation Virgil, it sounds like he's a bit of a nightmare. Maybe speaking to his supervisor is the only option, they should have tools to deal with his behaviour but it does sound like he's in a mess. I wonder if he's always been this way, or whether the death of his mother has affected him badly. These things are rarely straightforward. Still, either way it's no excuse, people will only carry a 'bad egg' for so long, and sympathy only goes so far. It must be difficult not being his direct line manager, 'cos if you were I guess it probably wouldn't have gone so far. Shame. Things like that, they make everyone feel bad, and it's doubly bad if everyone else is working hard to try and plug the gap. I don't envy you, it must be a very frustrating situation. And I guess, I'm a little worried because I know in my own workplace when the sh*t starts flying it tends to stick to everyone. Sorry to have nosied into the situation, it's one of those things, people issues, they really interest me and yet bug the h*ll out of me when I have to deal with them. It's like a puzzle, you know there's a solution and you just have to find it, but in this case the puzzle has to at least meet you 1/2 way, and some people aren't willing to do that. I'm so curious now. I'd love to know what Bob has to say for himself. (Going away now to switch of nosey neighbour mode - sorry )

That is funny Fifth. You are not being nosey. I volenteered this. The meeting is scheduled for 2 PM my time, so if I have time afterwards I'll bring everyone up to date, otherwise when I get home tonight. Should be fun. I'm curious myself. Actually it's just about time for our team weekly meeting, so I'll see him there.

My God, Virgil, having worked in the technology industry I know EXACTLY what you are talking about. As PM you can kick him off the project, but truthfully, I think you may have been able to head some of this off at the get-go. First, did you put out an RFP and did they win it? Next time you might research your vendor's background to ensure they can meet customer demands and your deadlines. Secondly, did you bring up their poor JIT supply chain problem and poor quality assurance problems as soon as you knew about them? I know you risk mitigated the problem, but did you make his supervisor and yours aware of the delimma? Thirdly, although you cannot change the situation now, you can avoid it in the future. Talk to his supervisor and yours and tell them you do not want Bob working on any of your future projects. A technology company never has just one project, so have them put him on a cost / cost-plus project with low risk. Sorry this happened to you. ONE POINT THOUGH: on the personality profile, an engineer is usually an ISTP - that "P" is a big deal. Basically, a Perceiver works when he or she is inspired - that could be in the middle of the night, so it would be unnatural to expect Bob to work 8-5. On the other hand, most engineers are disciplined enough to work their own hours every day (for some reason most engineers are nocturnal beasts who do best in evening hours, not unlike those creative writers). See if you can't find one of those.

ONE POINT THOUGH: on the personality profile, an engineer is usually an ISTP - that "P" is a big deal. Basically, a Perceiver works when he or she is inspired - that could be in the middle of the night, so it would be unnatural to expect Bob to work 8-5. On the other hand, most engineers are disciplined enough to work their own hours every day (for some reason most engineers are nocturnal beasts who do best in evening hours, not unlike those creative writers). See if you can't find one of those.

I was thinking on the same lines. Bob seems like someone who cannot function well under rules, to him it doesnt seem important to follow a set guideline. Can it be termed as some conflict in working methodology or approach towards solving a problem? But, it is important that he understands the larger picture and how to work well in a team.

Countess, I'm impressed at how much you know about corporate contracting. No there wasn't an actual RFP (Request for Proposal). This vendor makes a one of a kind transmitter, a large thing at an unusual frequency. That's their expertise, and they make these one at a time. Bob talked us into having them build the reciever part and that's outside their expertise. But because it's linked to the transmitter, we went sole source directly to them. No we did not bring up the quality issues right away. They were intertwined with the development issues and we essentially worked them out ourselves and implemented an inspection procedure. What are you doing in school? You should be in our contracts department. seriously, someone's. Maddie, you are absolutely right, Bob has problems working under rules. He's the type of engineer that is very good at tinkering, trying this once and then that until something works. That's what I call seat of the pants engineering. There is a place for this, but not this program. I'll get into what happened in a little while.

Myers-Briggs? I remember having to do that at work once. I always felt like I was having my horoscope chart done. Maybe, Virgil, you should read Bob's tarot and see if that offers you any insight into solving this problem. Am I being an arse right now? I don't mean to be, I just think work situations like this suck and I like to make fun of it all. And, I am curious to see how this all turned out so write another blog about it.

Instead of starting another blog Shalot, I'll complete this blog with a comment. The confrontation was scheduled for 2 PM but at 10:30 Am we had our weekly team meeting. At first it was a little tense, neither of us not knowing what to say to each other. He was sitting a few seats to my right and I could see him on occaision from the corner of my eye. We didn't even say good morning to each other. Anyway once we got the meeting started and his issues came up it was incredible. He was on top of everything, knew all the answers for a change. Even when his action of submitting that chart he owed from March came up, he said he had provided it at the end of last week to the engineer who I had overseeing his work. He must of seen the big grin that spread across my face when he said that. My God he was doing everything possible to show he was working hard. There is no question I put the fear of God in him. It was remarkable. He also had great news, that they had built six of those recievers and all six worked. So what had been 4 out of 44 in the past we were now 6 for 6. Of course he started to smile when he announced that. The lucky SOB. Ok when 2 o'clock came he brought his boss with him. I had committed to being as nice and accomodating as possible. Obviously he felt chastised and having six for six work I really couldn't argue too much. Nonetheless they took a defensive approach and explained it by saying that since they were ahead of schedule they felt they could try one with the optimized process and once that worked he gave them the go ahead to do more. I explained that if you had come to the team and discussed this we probably would have agreed and changed the plan. The problem was that after all the vendor problems we had in the past he went off and changed something out of the blue. Anyway they apologized and we were both ok. I told him I was extremely pleased we got six for six and I think we have nailed this. I think he realized he going off like a loose canon was wrong. So we had a happy ending.

I'm glad it ended so well.

I'm glad it ended well too, and I'm glad that unlike me, you don't have a need to feed him some humble pie becaus apparently he scurried to avoid it.
Good luck on the rest of your project.

Thank you Countess. I suspect this won't be the last problem with Bob. We've gone through this cycle of him doing something wrong and then getting pressure and then responding and then back over again. Just this was the worst yet.