Iwant It Yesterday

On Tuesday, you are assigned a new project, task, or problem. You think you need at least a week and of course you need to know more to be sure. You ask your manager for the deadline to determine if you require more resources.

Your manager replies IwantItYesterday.

The result is that you can't ask for more resources. Even if you resolve it today, you will have failed.

After several days of hard labor, your manager yells at you: "I told you I needed that on Monday!" You think he is telling you that you need to put in more effort to be able to deliver on next Monday, but every one else thinks you are either a slacker or that you are incompetent.

Actually it's just a good example of really bad management. I'm sure your colleagues will sympathize, knowing that such events will strike randomly. (Randomly? try systematically)

FearCulture prevents your coworkers from sympathizing with you.

You might say "I sent it to you the day before, and then my system crashed tomorrow, and I lost it. That caused me to start all over again a week ago. I am trying today to get out of the endless loop. Perhaps if we set another date tomorrow, we can get out of this time warp and complete it in real time."

Then your manager will say: "You are lying of course, there was nothing sent, you did nothing and you will work your ass off tonight and have it ready for tomorrow morning. Or else." FearCulture all over again.

This is not so much about an incompetent boss as it is about an incompetent organization. When all feel threatened, they start making the wrong decisions. This happens also when rewards are too big. See Enron.

You missed the point that operations, challenges and completions must be in "real time". The response was offered in the same tone as the challenge to illustrate the fictitious "I want it before I ask for it" nonsense. -- DoNotWantItGoodWantItTuesday

I've seen cases where the sales team told the client it was ready, when in fact it was still in development. The developer was placed at the customer's site officially to "monitor" it, but in fact was doing development on-site. Needless to say, the developer was not happy about this, and it created friction between the techies and sales team.

Actually, I usually encounter this as IwantItYesterdayOrSooner. This is why EinsteinExpress was invented.

It's not just FearCulture. It's also ChildishBehavior?. See IwantaPony. Cheers, --JasonNocks

See: BecomeCompetent, CountTheHands, ParkingLotTherapy, PointyHairedBoss

Contrast: TheConsultantsMantra

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