On Wed, 2006-02-01 at 15:54 -0500, Louis Suarez-Potts wrote: > MP actually works like this in practice, despite your claims to the > contrary.
I think that is your perspective, quite a lot of people seem to believe differently but hey, I'm not really that concerned I haven't time to do much more than I do and its not my responsibility. I try and provide information here and on the Educ list for people. That's how this thread arose. Someone asked some questions and I have tried to provide some honest answers. > It just sometimes work against what you want. And that > seems to infuriate you. Not at all. I have no axe to grind personally. If I think something is important enough I'll find a way to do it. You didn't like me promoting OOo alongside INGOTs at NEA, that's cool, we got space at BETT on the OpenForum Europe Booth and it was INGOTs only. Mind I was on holiday at the time so it was a couple of colleagues who did it who are much less pro-OOo than I am in any case. I have never had any particular expectations when working on the marketing project, I came to be helpful and I still try to be within the parameters laid down and the time I can commit. I do have some important things happening with the UK Government at present so time is tight and I can probably do OOo more service in that arena anyway. I try and promote OOo wherever I go. I had my OOo T-shirt on in the Caribbean and I think persuaded a guy running a small engineering business to give OOo a try. But none of that is really going to affect the main MP in any particular way in any case. The only times I get infuriated is if I get accused of malice when there is none there or if someone is treated badly unnecessarily. We all get a bit heated from time to time but mainly with me its with Chad chewing the fat over Microsoft and I already apologised to him over that. So I really think you have the wrong person if you think I am frustrated at not getting my own way on something here. I have far too many other things to do. > Open source, and OOo is not a "do as you > like" environment. Especially in marketing, we have to ensure our > message is coherent and cogent. I don't think I ever said it was. Getting the best out of people is what leadership and management is all about and unfortunately, unlike machines people vary a lot so that requires a lot of flexibilty of approach and relationship building that is time consuming. I'm working on a project at the moment to turn around a new hi-tec school that has recently failed its OFSTED inspection. £25m of tax payers money (I won't tell you how much they have spent on MS licenses :-) ) The problem isn't the brand new building with racks of blade servers etc - you can probably guess where the problem lies. Solving it is going to be down to building relationships with people and between people. After that I might have a chance to convert the place to Open Source ;-) > And we also need to maintain a friendly atmosphere here. I'm very friendly :-) > We can argue > and disagree--that's what this list is alas known for, Why alas? Human beings argue and disagree, that is what reality is. What motivates them? What buttons do you press to get them to say yes I'll do that? If X is an awkward cuss how do I get him on side? Particularly if he's a productive awkward cuss. Yes it would be nice to have them all just pick stuff off the to-do list but that isn't going to happen. > more than > anything else--but I'd rather not only do that. I am tired of > incessant complaints and would much rather focus on getting things done. You accused me of lecturing you before, and you will probably take this in the same vein, but I'll take a risk - after all, I am a management consultant :-) If you want to focus on getting things done you have to take care of the complaints first and get people on-side who are not. The complaints are part and parcel of the deal - its why management is not easy. -- Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ZMS Ltd --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
