What Didn't They Know & When Didn't They Know It

One of the biggest lessons we in the cubicles experience early in the days of inhabiting our flexiwall spaces is that thems above us don’t know what’s happening.

Oh, this isn’t a general indictment of management. In fact, it’s not an accusation against middle management at all: I see too too clearly that my immediate supervisor knows what is going on in our area. And, by the way, “What’s going on” isn’t necessarily a whistleblower alarm, either.

It is, literally, What – Is – Going – On.

Things happen in a company.

Usually because we do them.

Without activity, there is no business.

But you’d think sometimes that the executive team doesn’t quite realize this.

We are, for example, building a serializer. This involves Engineering. This involves several engineers. And equipment. And money to pay for the engineers and equipment. This serializer – and, for the record, The Cube has no idea what a serializer is/does/looks like (‘sounds cool, though, yes?) – this wonder of modern technology will be installed on the production floor, where the Operations group will inherit Engineering’s brainchild and exploit the living daylight out of its muscular qualities and boundless youthful energy. Ta-Da!

So it was with a sensation of disconnect that I came across a memo left lying on a copier (left-behind memos are a great source of company news), a correspondence to the effect that Operations had just paid out $XX,XXX for a serializer…?

“Perhaps Operations is paying for the Engineering project?” mused I – but since I knew that the Engineering serializer added up to $YY,YYY, the X and Y of this knowledge did not add up to a coherent Z.

Being a nosy Cube, I “returned” the forgotten memo to the VP of Operations, casually mentioning the Engineering serializer almost-completed.

“Really?” said VP/Ops. “Who’s that for?”

Emmm.

I believe we can all see where this is going.

Despite the fact that every Friday middle management reports to its Veeps – and every Monday the Veeps share donuts with the Prez – somehow, someway VP/Eng and VP/Ops – sitting a loooong five feet apart at the executive conference table – were unable to communicate their knowledge of what their individual departments were doing. Or perhaps the VP/$$$ might have notice the parallel expenditures and brought it up???

Or maybe they had no knowledge of what their Depts were doing: The Cube isn’t at those Exec Status Meetings, nor inside the Veep thought waves.

What didn’t they know and when didn’t they know it…