A true life story on management priorities.

A friend of mine works for a scientific organisation in Great Britain. This is one of those places, where people do not add ”PhD” to their signature, as everybody else has it.  The facility has horizontal structure, where each team has 5-6 people and one team leader.  About 10 teams have another manager.

There is one team leader who has a wife and a daughter. Wife was educated in a private school, went to a university, then a PhD degree. After their only daughter was born, she never returned back to work and became a housewife. The daughter is about 16 years old, she attempted to go a private school but failed entry exams. The house was bought as a present by his parents, so never had to take a mortgage. The job pays about $130,000 a year.

At work an important meeting has been planned to meet with engineers on important hardware installation. As the engineers were coming from the other town it takes them about 3 hours to get there. Both teams are busy and took over 6 months to agree on the meeting.

A day before the meeting the leader sends his apology for not being able to attend the long planned meeting. He showed up straight after the meeting and the reason for missing it, was …attending installation of a cat flap.

His old cat was put to sleep and he was going to get a new one.  The cat flap installation was unsuccessful and had to be repeated.