The Gaps Between Business, Process and Technology
What the boss wants vs the outcome that budget and time constraints allow are often at odds. How does a business bridge them?
There was a period about 15 years ago during which I was intimately acquainted with the 5th largest crude oil businessman in China. His son was renting a room in my apartment while he was studying in Singapore.
Every time he visited his son he would also take some time out to catch up with me. He often shared stories of how he rose from rags to riches in the early days of capitalism within a communist country. Needless to say, a lot of objectives were accomplished using personal favors and relationships.
That aside, one thing did define his management philosophy, which he often told his staff — he was only interested in the outcome, not the process. He liked hiring people who did whatever it took to get things done. To him, no matter how clever you were in explaining the process or detailing the difficulties and strategies involved, it was pointless if you couldn’t get things done.
As a boss, his mentality was: “I hire people to solve problems for me, not to explain to me the problem and why it is difficult to resolve.”
