A rudderless ship

Back in the real world again after another project meeting in Kiruna. I know that I'll moaned about this before, but it pisses me off that 12 people have to travel every week from Luleå to Kiruna (which takes about 3 1/2 hours each way by road or rail) in order to sit in a meeting room with 2 people who live in Kiruna. Seems crazy. I know that LKAB (the client) is filthy rich and doesn't give a toss about the costs being incurred, but being wasteful just for the sake of it is wrong in any language.

I'm starting to really dread these meetings as I now know how it's all going to pan out. Swedes are very nice and considerate people, can't fault them for that. We could all learn a thing or two there. However, their over-riding concern for making sure that everyone feels equal often means that it's nearly impossible to get anyone to make a decision about anything. We sit there going around in circles and the only decision that seems to get made is one that says we'll all have a think about the problem and discuss it again at the next meeting. I'm used to a much more direct approach where the very purpose of a project meeting was to make decisions there and then. So I'm finding this to be very tiresome. Case in point: A couple of meetings ago, the client announced that they would like to break the project up into several portions to aid them with construction. That's a bit of a hassle for us as our system is designed to function as one complete unit. Not impossible, but not the approach I would personally have chosen. I explained that we could achieve what they wanted (after all, they are the client) , but that there would be some short term limitations before everything was connected up together. I turn up at the next meeting and the client starts talking about whether or not it's possible for me to break my work up into sections. Hello ? Didn't we already decide about that ? Apparently not. Lesson learnt, I clarified the situation by saying that, as they were the client, we would be following their request and would be delivering our assigned work in the portions they wanted. I repeated my comment from earlier that they should remember that there would be some restrictions on use until all parts had been delivered. This last statement was possibly a mistake on my part. I get to the meeting yesterday and the topic comes up as to whether (you guessed it) I could break my work up into the desired portions. I had a gutsfull of this subject by now, so I gave a one-word answer "YES". I then went one step further and insisted that the client write my answer into the meeting minutes while I watched. Case closed ? We'll see next meeting.

As a by-product of all this dithering, these meetings seem to be getting longer and longer. With not a great deal more to show for it. They are "supposed" to start at 1pm and finish at 4pm, but lately they have been extending out well past 6pm. Which is crazy. One time we had a 9am start because there was going to be a presentation by a specialist contractor. We all arrived at 9am, to find out that the specialst had cancelled their booking. So we commenced with our usual 1pm start meeting at 9am instead. Despite having FOUR extra hours at the start, the meeting that day finished not at 4pm, but at 7pm.

What is it that they say about the amount of working expanding to fit the time available ?

Because of all this, I get quite stressed thinking about the logistics of getting to and from the meeting. Ideally I'd take the train. It gets into Kiruna a couple of hours before the meeting starts, so that would be perfect. Time to have lunch and get myself properly organised. The problem is at the other end where I can't guarantee that we'll be finished before the train  leaves again. I hate just leaving things to chance, so another reason why I hire a car every time. Costs the client more than the price of a train ticket, and makes me more tired the next day, but I'm stuck for choices.

Sweden has a lot of people calling themselves Project Managers. Typically that just means they are just someone who knows a lot about their technical area, but have never been taught about how to really drive a project. This situation would never have happened back in NZ, and that intentional level of planning, focus and commitment is probably about the only thing I miss. That and steak & cheese pies.