Re: It's a business meeting
One of my roles across various jobs was to write manufacturing formulae (aka recipe books) for the factories, making anything from shampoos, through medicines, up to tablets and sterile products.
The problem was that every one written had to be 'signed off' by the manager of the department in question, the QC manager, and someone whose role I forget. Before getting there, it had to be checked by a qualified colleague and signed off by my departmental manager. I later years, it got even worse, since it also had to be 'approved' by the shop floor staff (the 'team') who would be using it, and anything they added was even more guaranteed to get you to be asked to 'think about it' (see below).
In all the years I was there, not a single formula was ever signed off on the first pass. Although every signatory was a guaranteed bottleneck, the worst one was the QC manager.
Even a formula which had been flagged for editing after being used for many years without issue - perhaps changing the name of a a machine used in it, which had been replaced - would trigger months of back-and-forthing as various other changes were requested.
His favourite feedback method was to highlight a paragraph and write 'have a think about this one' next to it. I challenged him several times:
"Look, Richard. Why don't you just TELL me what you want it to say instead of hinting at things? It hasn't been a problem before, so why is it one now?"
One of the outcomes even involved calling meetings to 'discuss' the changes that had not been a problem until now - and all the time the factory was complaining the formula was out of date (they were pulled when edits were needed) and they had jobs to complete. The meetings were never held quickly, because it was almost impossible to schedule any meeting nearer than two months hence, because everyone was already booked up in other meetings.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
