A Sign of Stress???

In my Inbox today;
"D,
Since the session 2 of the COTS and solutions validation does not have the qourom of some critical members past wednesday at 0915 as scheduled, nor at 1030 as deferred, it did not happen.
We understand that some critical members may need to reprioritize their time due to the major projects coming onboard. I am sincere in saying I was NOT frustrated nor sore at any individual, though I was irritated with the fact that the critical members required for quorum are just too difficult to be scheduled together.

Therefore, I suggest that D pls call for the session 2 at a time of your convenience. We shall ensure our attendance where practical and inform you otherwise if not.

Now for a more difficult topic,
please clarify if Application Consultants are required to conduct all product demonstrations everytime.
My "preference is for App Consultants to conduct product demonstrations only for prototyping stage, or technical demonstrations, and sales people should eventually be fully capable and conduct standard off the shelf product presentations, with app consultants in attendance wherever required.

D's idea is for app consultants conduct All product demos becoz the so called techies are more familiar of the system since they hav opportunities to play with them whereas sales people have other concerns.

I disagree with this specific observation becoz it does not look like our sales have the capacity to focus on product sales in the near term. In such a situation, the techies will practically only play with the system(s) once to twice a year, or once in two years, as per our experience with "XX", "XY" and "XYZ". This effectively levels the playing ground and makes no difference whether it is a sales person or app consultant conducting standard product demonstrations.

However, as brought up in my many discussions, leading up to one grandmother of all discussions with D on 05 April and minuted online, should our sales direction, or a portion of our sales team, is to focus on product, or solutions with specific products, going forward, this will be more practical. Having said this, if the sales person is focusing on a range of products, or specific solutions with specific products, the sales person should be fully capable of demonstrating it out of box since it is their ricebowl.

If it is an issue of personalities instead of roles, like ZZ, in my opinion, rightly pointed out, lets develop the people and acquire the required proficiency.

i m not afraid of learning new skills everyweek and taking on additional roles, including as proposed to Daniel several times, taking on sales role fulltime; if i hav been (which i believe i hav) such a pain to and energy sapping for D running the app consulting group the way i do(not).
J has demonstrated the willingness to structure the skills required and map out development paths so we can develop people;
NN has always played multiple roles and continues to do so without complain;
OB has rightly identified one area of ELP is presentation skills and asked me to prepare and deliver presentation training as part of biz english, while he develops the rest;
p.n has volunteered to put up and administer metadot intranet portal so our body of knowledge and organizational intelligence can be preserved and mined;
SLS has been supporting us technically and volunteered to undertake ST training though it is not in his domain going forward (and knowing full well, once trained he will be involved happy or not)
in short we are all enthusiastic, we have all demonstrated our willingness to and continueto go the extra mile

my challenge to all of us senior execs, are we prepared to walk the walk, after all our save the world co mission hubris and what not. or like J wrote in one email, sometimes it feels like father crabs trying to teach our children (staff and clients) how to walk straight.

if we continue to believe that some of the people we are hiring going forward, eg. for sales, may be incapable of learning up and acquiring the proficiency to conduct an off the shelf standard product demo, i think all the things we are doing are for nought, becoz, they probably will be too thick to learn how to use our intranet portal and download the standard templates to prepare proposals.

somewhere in this pessimism, i have high hopes for the company and our team. partly becoz i turned down a job offer early this year which pays me in six months what the company pays me in three years (and i continue to kick myself in the backside for it). These offers happen, as i am sure to many of us, when we are often with high profile work like audit and consulting for big name clients. I strongly believing there is much more potential, fun, excitement, learning and future in the company. please do not burst my bubble by reducing this into a mere 10-8 job. especially when the personalities mentioned above hav all stepped up to the challenge after D's morale boosting presentation early in the year.

Father Crab, time to lead the walk.

sincerely
-baby crab "

Chill Baby Crab, chill......He,he