Getting Everyone On The Same Page

I was reading this article on TheDailyWTF.

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Get-to-da-COPPA!.aspx

Like many TheDailyWTF articles, it's a nice humorous story, but I love the last part of the story.

The short story is engineer Derek could not come to a reasonable compromise with engineer Steve on a solution to a problem. After many internal frustrations, Derek bypassed Steve's engineering team entirely, went to the software install team, and changed the install process for the software. The result? Derek implements his solution without ever involving the team that writes the software. The end of the article states, "Steve's team got to keep their constraint, and the customers didn't."

I love that last sentence.

"Steve's team got to keep their constraint, and the customers didn't."

The core engineering team will never see a setup (and will never know the setup for awhile) that the customers will always have. Long term, that can't be good.

While this is an extreme example, it got me thinking. How often do internal managers/staff not come to an agreement or get on the same page? As a consequence, staff begin doing whatever it takes to get the job done, bypassing teams, roles, procedures, etc. I think tiny versions of it happen all the time. Some amount of it we accept b/c we work with a lot of people, but how much of it can be made better?

Albert Pujols the Great

(Following up my post from earlier in the year.)

On May 29th, Albert Pujols saw his line for the year sit at

.257 BA, .326 OBP, .395 SLG, .722 OPS

Epicly awful for a man with a career line of

.330 BA, .424 OBP, .621 SLG, 1.045 OPS

at the time. Now it's September 16th. Albert Pujols just went 4 for 4 against the Phillies. His line for the year is now:

.301 BA, .372 OBP, .549 SLG, .921 OPS

This is simply stunning. After an brutally awful April & May (which likely included a hidden injury) Albert Pujols has performed well enough to get his batting average back up above .300 and have an OPS over .900. It's an incredible year by normal human standards, definitely subpar for Albert Pujols standards, but Albert Pujols' legend continues to grow.