Fire Alarm Drill - II

I thought I’d post a little follow-up to the recent post titled “Fire Alarm Drill”
As you know, a fire-alarm drill was conducted in the rain a few weeks ago, followed up by an email from Functional Management that nobody is allowed to charge to “Overhead Cost” and that employees will be expected to make up the time on their own. Of course, the idea is to keep indirect costs down. Functional Management doesn’t want 1000 employees charging 30min to “Overhead Cost” because that’s what Functional Management charges to. It’s their Bread and Butter. They want to keep “Overhead Cost” low so that they can stay off the radar. Somebody might notice that we pay these guys to do nothing.

In the aftermath of the fire drill and ensuing email, employees were pissed. They were so pissed that for the next two hours, that’s all they could talk about. Everyone was chatting away about how ridiculous it is that they had to stand out in the rain, and now they’re expected to make it up on their own time. As a result, the Program had 1000 employees not working for 2hrs, so the Program lost 2000 man-hrs of production time as a result. So rather than saving 500 man-hours, the Company (Shitshow) lost 2000 man-hours; a net loss of 1500 man-hours.

Now the million dollar question: Does Functional Management care?
Answer: Nope, thanks to the beauty of the Matrix Management Model.

You see, the 2000 lost man-hours that resulted from employee frustration only affects the Program. Therefore, the added cost is Program Management’s problem. Functional Management doesn’t give a damn. Their bonuses are based on an entirely different budget, one in which saving five cents in “Overhead Cost” is preferable to adding one dollar in Program Cost. And the Shitshow then tells its employees to always do “what’s best for the company”. But as usual, Functional Management is only looking out for themselves.

Because what’s good for functional managers is bad for the company, I throw rocks.