Through some hard work and multiple attempts, we earned the opportunity to present our capabilities to the chief marketing officer at a large insurance company here in Des Moines. The VP of Marketing liked what she saw and thought we could help support their Web site redesign efforts and helped us schedule a follow up meeting with the man in charge of the project. Giddy up!
So we go and meet with a middle manager who was in charge of their new Web site project, explained why we were there, how we could help and expected this new business opportunity to come to fruition. Game on!
Um, yeah…not so much. He responded with about an hours worth of explanation as to why we couldn’t help him and the overall process of working with his company as an outside vendor. Here’s how this works:
1. Projects, any project, needs to be approved a year in advance by a committee.
2. If you are lucky enough to get the project approved, you move forward.
3. If you want to make any changes, tweaks, slight adjustments to the project…..wait for it….you have to resubmit the entire project and then wait another year. I almost threw up in my mouth.
So their Web redesign had been approved about 18 months ago and they had a couple of months of work already started.
LF: “What if we just built you a blog?”
Him: “Well, we’d have to submit that as a revision to the proposal and wait a year to hear if its approved or not before you could get started on it.”
LF: “What if we wanted to look at supporting your SEO efforts?”
Him: Same answer.
I’ve never met anyone that had so much to say that really said nothing at all. This guy talked to us for about two hours about why he couldn’t do things, droning on and on about procedure, process and protocol. The chance of being spontaneously inspired to act in the best interest of the company was not going to happen. We couldn’t get out of their any faster.
The revelations from this meeting should strike fear in all of you. Here’s why:
1. They gave zero consideration to Web 2.0 strategy. By the time these guys are done, Web 3.0 will arrive and their site will be seriously out of date. Not good for a company that tries to position itself as a leader.
2. These guys insure a good portion of the Iowa community. What does this say about their efforts in servicing you when you might need some help from them? Hopefully you won’t have to wait a year to find out.
3. Layoffs by the thousands are occurring yet this old school model of management and process continues. No wonder our companies are in the toilet.
The bottom line is that companies have been too thick with middle managers for too long. These people have had to find a reason to exist, to have a job, to survive, so what did they do? They created processes, procedure and protocal, hired staffs to fulfill these functions and stuck it to you on your insurance premiums.
America needs a game changer. America needs the ability to be more nimble or we run further risk of more job losses here at home and more jobs created overseas. Wake up people!
Author: Josh Fleming
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I refer to these people as “insulation”-their job is to do nothing but get in the way of getting anything done by insulating any good ideas from decision makers. It is a sad state of affairs and I have seen it to often. A young lean company becomes successful. They grow. They hire people who have nothing to do with the process of building a product. Rather their job is building a process-that slows down the innovation that got the company where it was in the first place. Thus-the lean innovative company begins to lag behind. Younger, leaner competitors begin to eat their lunch (until they get big and fall in line like lemmings). Are we doomed? Probably, Between lawyers and insulation it’s a miracle ANYTHING gets done.
OMG – this was SO awesome! And the photo was classic! This guy is what Ben Horowitz calls a heretic and I call the nay-sayer. Nothing is EVER possible. I come from Operations where I solved people’s problems for a living. Guys like this just used to frustrate the crap out of me. I like the motto of just do it and ask for forgiveness later. But it’s harder to do that from a vendor’s perspective.
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