Bean counters
Today, I had to give a presentation at work which I really resented. It is required for all employees in my position and lots of people above me and below me as well. We have to show the team in charge of saving the company money (bean counters) that we used some tools from the company toolbox to solve a problem that saved the company money. I had argued with my bean counting advisor about the reality of the cost savings figure she had come up, but to no avail. So I get in front of all these bean counters to explain the problem that I helped solve while I was in Chihuahua in August. I discussed the tools and process and methods that the team used, and finally explained how we arrived at the dollar value of savings because of the project. The head bean counter calls my bullshit, and my advisor who came up with the figure more or less let me fry in front of the group! I found myself in front of my audience, channeling my inner Pano and thinking to myself, “You bean counters have no respect for the brilliant, beautiful, and bitchin’ engineering that we did in such a short period. I had to dummy all this shit down so that you could understand it and I had to leave out a large part that was worthwhile because if I had presented it, somehow those results would have nullified the work that we had done because it doesn’t fit into your idea of what a cost savings project is. Screw all of you!!!” Instead, I kept my cool and told the head bean counter that he was probably right and would he please invite me to a follow up meeting to revise the figure? Yeah self-control.
posted by CollaterKal @ 5:03 PM
3 Comments:
to hell with self-control. put your bean advisor on the spot, and ask for details of how she had arrived at that figure.
Oh dear -- I am worried that you are becoming an INFLEXIBLE ENGINEER!!! Lean manufacturing and six sigma and business process improvement are here to stay. Better to learn how to talk the lingo than to become (horrors) an obsolete engineer. Stay relevant, embrace the bean counters, and you will stretch yourself professionally as well as personally.
I have no objections against my company's continuous improvement initiatives. I realize that we can't and won't stay competitive without them. In fact, I use six sigma practices in my every day life (I chose my condo by making a prioritization matrix with factors, weights, and summations! Yeah EMEA360!).
I DO have an issue with my company's issuance of blanket policies for all employees. As a research and development engineer, my project requirements should be different than a manufacturing engineer's, whose should be different than a project engineer's, etc. Instead, we're all held to the same project requirements. AND the fact that almost everyone picks something that they did in the past to count as their project, instead of knowing that the problem they're working on will be their project, makes me think that something needs to change.
As for the bean counters, I just wish my advising bean counter had stood up for me in front of the group to defend the number that she came up with and I never agreed with.
OK, actually the deepest issue is that I wasn't allowed to present all the facets of the project that described how beautiful the engineering we did was. I just wanted to be appreciated for the work our team did, and the projeect that we solved.
For the record, I knew how my bean counter came up with the figure, I just disagreed with her and couldn't convince her otherwise. Live and learn, I suppose.
Post a Comment
<< Home