Montgomery Scott: Agile in the 23rd Century
The secret is to give them what they need, not what they want
A short companion piece to Managing Up in which I give up the right to act like I’m cooler than the average developer.¹
I was a big fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation when I was a kid, and there is an episode where Scotty from the original series turns up to show the newbies how they did things back in the day.
This scene popped into my head after I’d finished writing the previous post and while I’m nowhere near as much of a cynic as Mr Scott², he does make two excellent points:
- Starfleet captains are like children
- You didn’t tell him how long it would really take, did you?
Starfleet captains are like children
They want it their own way, and they want it now, but your job isn’t to give them what they want, it’s to give them what they need. The only way to do this is to get to know the captain and understand their objectives, and to know more about the mechanics of the ship than the captain does.
This means that when the captain says they need more power to the warp drive, you know that what they really mean is that they want to go faster, and as chief engineer you should be able offer better options for increasing the ship’s speed.
It’s not the captain’s job to know every nut and bolt of the ship, it’s up to you to understand their objective and translate that into the best solution.
You didn’t tell him how long it would really take, did you?
La Forge told the captain that his work would be ready in an hour, which is exactly the amount of time it’s going to take. This might be a reasonable estimate for his analysis, I’ve got no idea, but that’s not the point.
La Forge is the Chief Engineer³, he has all kind of responsibilities that could impinge on the hour he’s got to complete this task. What he should have done was ask the captain when the report was required, and agreed to deliver it by that time. Scotty is kind of missing the point here as well, you don’t do this to make yourself look good, you do it so you can appropriately prioritise the work.
Maybe the analysis really is required in an hour, in which case you better get on it, but it might not be needed for three days, so there will be other more immediate things you should be getting on with instead.
It’s not the captain’s job to know every single thing you’re working on, so it’s your responsibility to understand the priority of any task they give you.
¹ I will still secretly think it
² Though I think my Scottish accent is more convincing
³ So really he should be delegating this to someone else, but I digress
