[ericbrow]

It took me a few rounds to detect this trick. I had a boss who would pick up on clues from upper management on where they may be headed. He would come back to our team, and throw everyone at a problem. "This is a priority for management.", he'd tell us. We'd solve the problem. About half the time, the solution would die right there, because management never requested it.

What he was actually doing was trying to guess what upper management wanted before they requested it. This way, when the request did come through, he'd have the solution on the spot. It made him look great. It wasted about half our team's time. One thing it did do for us is give us more experience in solving new problems, but at the expense of getting our day-to-day work done on time.

But I did get to the point of not being so eager to jump on his "call to action" meetings unless I had outside verification that it was an actual call to action by management.

He ended up being the head guy in charge of IT.

[ISL]

It has taken me a long time to realize that at least half of the prose I write, when writing a scientific paper, will be thrown away. Trouble is, until the full document takes shape, I never know which half.

If someone can predict and deliver what a customer wants, before they want it, with a 50% hit rate, that is excellent.

What appears to be troublesome in the narrative is, "It made him look great." It would be far more encouraging to see, "It made our team look great!" I get the sense that perhaps this boss wasn't sharing success, both credit and reward, with the team.

[codeisawesome]

Haha exactly, most of that comment looked like a glowing praise of that manager honestly! A rising tide should lift all boats - would be nice if GP posted whether the team also got any credits and rewards for being the LITERAL definition of Innovative Risk Takers!