Not too long ago I was in a staff meeting for my functional group. While I usually dodge these meetings like the plague I figured I could use a dose of functional entertainment. The topic of discussion was the technology road map that the function was pursuing including status from last year and the plans for this year and beyond.
Early on in the meeting I asked an earth shattering, mind blowing question: With respect to our functional groups contribution to the end product how do we compare to our competitors? Given that, what technologies should we be pursuing to close the gap created by our competitor’s offerings or increase our competitive advantage?
To me this seemed like a logical question, after all the shit show is a business with customers and as part of the shit show’s revolutionary stance on business, customer satisfaction is part of increasing shareholder value.
I wasn't surprised when the person leading the technology roadmap had no idea how to answer that question. The functional manager had no idea either but mentioned that when seeking funding for these types of projects, building a business case like that didn’t really factor into the proposal.
Knowing this would probably be the case I took the calculated risk of using this meeting as an opportunity to throw rocks with an audience watching. The risk paid off, it almost appeared that other people in the meeting were surprised at the lack of answers. With any luck I was able to plant a rock throwing seed in some of the people attending the meeting. Sometimes it just takes the right question to inspire people to start throwing rocks.
Because functional managers build roads based on maps to nowhere, I throw rocks.
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