[ale] Cost of freedom

[Lightner, Jeff]

As a former Controller (head of accounting) for a multi-million dollar
business I can tell you you're dead wrong.  

 

While my job certainly included controlling costs my main job was help
insure the business succeeded and I knew it.   More than once I made
decision that weren't correct "accounting" decisions but were correct
"business" decisions.   It isn't the "financial" folks that typically
prevent business important purchases due to short sighted cost issues
but rather operational management.   Operational management often tends
to think only of "making their numbers" for the current period to the
exclusion of impact to the business for longer periods (e.g. the month
vs the quarter, the quarter vs the year) and worse yet long term impact
on the business.   It usually seemed to me that most managers acted as
if they didn't expect to be around when their bad decisions would
finally catch up with the business.    I vividly remember one year
discussing something that would occur at the end of December in a
management staff meeting in September and being laughed at even though
my point was that every year they'd wait until early December to start
purchasing for the end of the month and pay a premium because the items
being bought were seasonal and more expensive the closer one got to the
end of the season.

 

When doing budgets or forecasts we'd do in depth analysis of expected
business as compared to past business to come up with fairly accurate
budget/forecast.   It truly annoyed me when senior operational
management in a meeting would say something like "increase the revenues
in the forecast by 5% and decrease the costs by 10%".   They were always
later surprised when they didn't hit their numbers.

 

________________________________

From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Jim
Kinney
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2011 8:02 AM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [ale] Cost of freedom

 

 

On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 7:46 AM, Geoffrey Myers
<lists at serioustechnology.com> wrote:

Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> On 5/16/11 11:30 AM, David Hillman wrote:
>> Why did we go with the Netgear box in the first place? Someone with
>> control over the purse strings thought it would be easier and faster.
> Someone was dead wrong and had a misconceived idea of what's really
> important.

Time and again, I see financial people making decisions regarding
technology.  It is so wrong.

Would you have your plumber do your taxes?


When I did plumbing, yes :-)

Financial people make decisions based on a single viewpoint just as the
tech people do. Both views are valid but the combination is the correct
action. It's the collaboration that is always missing. Competition
within the organization is not a process I've seen to be long-term
productive. A prior employment location had very little understanding of
"we all work on the same team" and so planning meetings were always
mired in backstabbing and power grabs and just plain old fights. 

	
	--
	Until later, Geoffrey
	
	"I predict future happiness for America if they can prevent
	the government from wasting the labors of the people under
	the pretense of taking care of them."
	- Thomas Jefferson

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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III

As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to
consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as
they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the
outcome.
- 2011 Noam Chomsky
 
Proud partner. Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
 
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