The Big Head Effect

When a senior manager thinks that he’s the king.

First let me give a bit of background about my job. Typically I work on engineering and sales, and sometimes run projects in IT and general business process enhancements.

I always tell my engineering team to treat me like a plumber - Don’t talk to me unless you have obstacles.

And this time, it’s a f@@king bomb.

Rocky is a brilliant engineer leading a team to deliver projects for one of the most well known brands in Taiwan. His amazing attention to detail always impresses me, plus, he’s an extremely competent engineer and also a very nice guy.

On the other hand we have Mr Old Generation or simply OG, who is intoxicated by his early success in the mid 90’s. He could spend hours talking about his heyday whenever he got an opportunity. Now he is responsible for the factory’s assembly operation. The lack of respect from his peers and subordinate really got into his head because he’s such a successful man. (Well, only in the mid 90’s)

Rocky calls me sounded exhausted

Rocky: “Ken, did you see my email?”

Open my email app, staring right at Mr OG’s statement.

”........ from now on, every project should go through me, and my department reserves the right to reject ANY project due to [various constrains]....”

His email only sent to people with lower rank, none of his peers nor seniors (he is 3 levels below the Chief) received the email. But we are in the 20th century and it’s email and not fax, which can be easily forwarded to anyone within two clicks.....

Me: “WTF’s going on?”

Rocky then explains the situation.

Apparently, OG, who still proudly lives in his mid-90’s want to gain more respect by intimidating my guys. And if you mess with my team without a good reason, you are as good as a dead meat. Don’t get me wrong tho, I always welcome criticism, but not dirty unconstructive bureaucratic tricks. Now OG got my attention.

Perhaps I should explain a bit about the way we work.

Sales guys got the lead, project engineers and sales engage with the client, supported by tooling / injection / electronics / mechanics / assembly, etc to develop the clients product. Once the design is qualified, we start mass production. Most clients are long term (>5years) and we have a pretty good reputation in the industry.

The reason why he got my attention is that NONE of the other teams would say such thing, he’s way above his head and blissfully unaware of it.

I pick up the phone: “Have you decided not to produce for one of our biggest clients?”

“Ken, this is not what I mean, it’s just I have [various issues] waiting to be solved, and not happy with how people treat me here, they don’t respect my good work”

Try so hard to hold my laughter, thinking WTF is wrong with this guy, giving me a load of bull crap.

“OG, you get paid to solve problems and so am I, now you are making your problem my problem and I don’t like it.”

“But, but, I can’t work....[blah blah blah]”

I interrupted him and shouted

“For f@@k sake, just shut up and get on with it, would you? You probably just made history in this firm by saying that you can reject new business, even our boss wouldn’t say that!”

“Hey Ken, bro, listen, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, but the project teams rarely consult me, they only talk to my subordinates which I’m not aware of. I don’t think they respect me at all.”

I was so furious.

“Sounds like it’s your god damn issue, who’s fault is it when your subordinates don’t report to you. F@@k me, you know what you are talking about? Plus, you don’t ask for respect, people respect you for who you are. It’s not something you can ask for if you are not respectable”

I paused for a few seconds, didn’t want to waste any more time on this piece of sh!t.

“Just get on with it and don’t you ever say this again, now, any more questions? Can you get out of the way and let Rocky and your men do their job?”

He grunted on the phone.

“Sure, they have my support”

“You are just doing your job” and I hung up.

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That‘s the end of my first story, you probably start wondering: “how is this firm profitable”; ”how come he’s not fired”. Or maybe “Ken, I feel for you”, anyway, stay tuned guys, more to come.

I tend to think about M.O.D.O.K when talking about people with big head. 😂😂😂