I don't take any pleasure in being a Cassandra

I'm going to deviate from my normal topics for this blog and write about something at work, in the hope that I might better understand what has happened. 

Sometime around the end of March (when we were locked down and working from home), the factory in Karmiel took on a new worker whose job was never clearly defined to me, but turned out to be responsibility for improving work methods in the metal division, primarily with reference to Priority. In other words, this new worker and I interfaced on many levels. He came with a background of working in other companies in similar areas so presumably knew a thing or two.

Almost immediately came the clashes between us. He wanted to change almost everything regarding how the metal division is implemented in Priority (processes, actions, work centres, warehouses) as well as how the reporting itself is done. Whilst some of the changes were necessary and overdue, some of them seemed unnecessary and would lead to the imposition of even more overhead than exists today.

My biases are already becoming apparent in that previous sentence: something with which I agree is fine, but something with which I do not agree is unnecessary. Several times I tried to persuade this employee to write a complete business plan so that it could be scrutinised and criticised but this never happened. During the single day (in June) that I spent in the Tel Aviv offices since March, I had a meeting with both my manager (the CFO) and the managing director, trying to explain why some of the proposed changes were not good. In fact, they were not proposed, they were already on the way to being implemented. The Karmiel factory manager also participated in this meeting - he had been charmed/seduced by this new employee and was prepared to back every single move. Their attitude was that I was complaining due to 'sour grapes', that this new employee would succeed where I had failed and because of this, I was determined to bring him down, so that he would not be more successful than I.

Is this true? I sincerely hope not. Throughout the months that followed, I tried very hard to separate any personal thoughts that I might have had from professional criticism. I was forced to complain a few more times - especially after blitzes of emails - and was told that it is good that there is someone who is trying to move this most stubborn division forward. I cannot disagree with this aim, but there are ways of achieving this.

This person several times told me that he was a "bulldozer" and would succeed in both passing his reforms and getting them implemented. I have kept on the sidelines for the past few weeks, not because that I am trying to show that I am waiting for him to fail, but because I want to let him have a free run, letting others make the criticism. Does this mean that I am waiting for him to fail?

Anyway, yesterday I was very surprised to receive an email from my manager telling me that this employee had decided to quit at the end of the month.

How am I supposed to feel? To gloat over the fact that most of my predictions came true? I don't take any pleasure in being a Cassandra. So much for being a bulldozer who sees projects through to their end. I don't what the reasons were that caused him to quit - they may be entirely personal reasons with nothing to do with his job. It doesn't really matter; what I want to know is who is going to pick up the pieces and continue with all his changes that are in mid-flow, or who is going to revert them to how they were. At the moment, changes in processes, etc, are causing more problems than they are solving.

I don't want to say to anybody "I told you so" but maybe I don't have any option. There is nothing to be gained from doing so, but this is going to be very hard to escape from if I am the person who will be required to assess the damage (I don't see that any progress has been made).

There is supposed to be a meeting held today, one of a series, whose topic is improving the output of the factory. Most of the time the discussions are about the arrival and installation of new equipment and the changes that these new machines will cause to our work methods, but I have no doubt that time will be devoted to this change in personnel. Due to a pressing personal reason, I cannot participate in today's meeting. It has happened before that meetings have been rescheduled because I couldn't participate at the given date or time, so it might be that this meeting will be rescheduled for the afternoon.

As always, wait and see.

[Update from a few hours later] The meeting has indeed been rescheduled for Wednesday.

I thought it appropriate to give an example where my well- meaning advice was totally ignored. The person wanted stations on the shop floor to report production as they finish each job (good). To this end, he requisitioned a computer for each station, each armed with a bar code reader, and connected to the wired network. At one stage it appeared that each station would require a separate Priority license as well as a network license. A few months earlier, I had implemented a similar system for on-station reporting using wireless bar code readers that would broadcast their barcodes to one central computer; each message that the readers would send would include a prefix identifying the reader (in other words, the worker). This solution would be cheaper and easier to implement (in my humble opinion); this suggestion was totally ignored. It rose again in a meeting a week or so ago when one manager had visited another factory and saw how they were reporting, using wireless bar code readers. Why should 'the person' ignore this suggestion? Because someone else suggested it? Because I suggested it? Maybe this suggestion can be used now that he is going.