Читать книгу Making It Happen - Kyle Mackenzie - Страница 8

Stu interrupted my little reverie. “As you might expect,” he said, “The Hyler board of directors, in all their wisdom, have already decided how much this project will cost.” I hated these pronouncements. We had only a rough idea of what work was needed, and the directors were already telling us what we would be spending, regardless of anything we might discover to the contrary. Based on my experience, I expected we would discover to the contrary. Then there would be hell to pay, even though the board must have pulled the cost estimate out of thin air.

“We have $1 million to spend, not including new equipment costs. Think you can do it for that?”

“Stu,” I began, “how am I supposed to answer that question? I just found out about the project 20 minutes ago.”

“Good,” said Stu, ignoring my protest, “I’ll tell Ralph that you can. I wouldn’t want to disappoint him.”

“Hold on a minute,” I said, getting my courage up. “One million may be the board’s figure, but I refuse to be caught out on this project like every other one. As soon as I know differently, Ralph is going to have to approve a new budget.”

Stu looked at me as if there was a whole world of pain out there that I didn’t understand. “Sure, sure,” he said. “Whatever it takes. Just make sure you pass it through me before you go talking to Ralph.” He sighed. “You may want to keep yourself pure and clean and out of the office politics, but one of us has to keep an eye on it. In fact, I think you’d better look at me as your political advisor on this one, as well as your sponsor.”

That seemed fair enough since his neck was out even more than mine.

“Well,” I said, standing up, “I better get going on this thing.” I had a last minute thought, “Who will I be coordinating with on the Human Resources end of things?”

Stu just looked at me and didn’t say anything.

I prompted him. “You know, with all the new machines, we’ll have to hire and train a bunch of people.” Stu still didn’t say anything and kept on looking at me. I started to get it. “Aw, Stu, “I sounded like a little kid whose bedtime had come half-way into his favorite TV show. “There’s a hell of a lot of work here. I don’t even know what I’m doing on the manufacturing side!”

Stu finally spoke. “I’m not going to break this into a million little pieces and hope that everything will get done. The whole thing is part of the same big project, and I want it run that way.” I must have looked depressed because he added, “You won’t be all on your own, you know. With my help you can pull team members from every department, and they’ll be doing most of the work in their areas. But I want you coordinating the whole thing.”

Resigned, I asked, “For the new systems as well?”

“The whole thing,” Stu said. “Except for the marketing campaign and the actual roll-out, which Marketing will handle. I want you to coordinate it all.”