Sunday, July 02, 2006

Bad Teams and Pest Control

As if it's not enough dealing with the insanity of a dysfunctional team for 8+ hours in a day, I now return home to a once thriving garden with select plants that have been buzzed to near ground level. Not to mention the wiggly tracks of dead grass in the lawn, emanating from the borders.

A thorough internet investigation reveals that the cause is rodent infestation -- microtus californicus, or voles, to be exact.


As I read more about how to stop these vegetation marauders, it strikes me how many parallels there are between the situation at work and the one in my borders.

They may look harmless, but they can do a world of damage in a very short amount of time.

One might guess that anything with the capacity to raze a plant with 20 2' long leaves to the ground in the space of one evening would be at least the size of a small breadbox. The sheer volume of organic matter should not by all accounts fit into a handful of furry black golfballs, especially ones that hardly make themselves seen.

Turns out, voles are burrowing animals which consume some obscene amount of thriving vegetation many times their own body mass daily, leaving behind piles of excretion in their surrounding environment. They love to make homes in areas of dense shrubbery, where they can hide from anything that can kill them.

And so it is with bad teams. Managers who hide in their offices and window cubicles (much like Dough Boy), covered by dense heaps of project plans and meetings, never surface often enough to be identified as pests. However, behind the scenes, their lack of intellect and slash-and-burn finesse turns happy and productive teams into a grumbling mass of discontentment in record time.

It's not just managers either; with peons, like Darth Hut or Soulless Himbo Backstabber, negative attitudes reproduce quickly and spread under bad visibility (accountability) conditions. The damage is especially potent when they are given direct input into hiring and mentoring.

They are related to lemmings.

As we all know, based on the wisdom handed down by video games, lemmings form large brainless herds which can be easily led -- in the absence of benevolent intervention -- off steep cliffs, down deep holes, or into walls.

'Nuff said.

Killing them is probably not an option.

I haven't the heart to buy or make poisons yet. For either the voles or the humans.

If you put them somewhere else, they will probably just come back.

Gardening forum participants report that catch and release ("Gopher Chauffeur") never really works unless the release occurs at least 10 miles from the catch location, preferably across a wide body of water or a multi-lane highway. One ingenious man painted the backs of the pests before setting them free, and was hardly surprised to find that weeks later, the matte-finish wonders had returned to his yard.

The catch and release is a common gutless upper-management technique whereby underperforming middle managers or other employees get re-deployed to other posts ("Loafer Chauffeur") -- either to isolate bad behavior and/or to accelerate resignation. But they're never put far enough away, and these folks manage by sheer dumb luck to achieve greater visibility or influence than ever before. Unfortunately, very few happen to drown or get run over on the return journey.

The sad reality is that NIMBY can be quickly followed by BIMBY: Back In My Back Yard.

Persuasive tactics have a mixed track record.

From chili powder to used cat litter to castor oil, various methods attempt to either put the voles on the run or give them the runs. Evidence suggests a mixed track record, and the application of such methods requires regular diligence.

Similarly, corporate deterrence employs increasing levels of discomfort: offsites, morale-boosting events, warnings, management workshops, etc. Occasionally, I've seen these things neutralize a certain level of unprofessional behavior. But without regular application, managers and other free-sadicals continue to work their aggro on suffering teams.

This shock therapy/convince-them-it-was-their-idea approach assumes a basic level of reasoning ability on the part of either the voles or the deadwood. As far as I can tell, these were the ones who, when God was handing out single-serve pasta salad bowls, didn't get sporks.

Natural predators work best.

Nothing works better at ridding an area of plague-ridden growth killers than something sharp, fast, and dangerous on the prowl for most of the day.

Introduce a top manager to a flagging project and within weeks they'll be lining up half-dead bodies and vital organs at the doorstep. In a good way.

Prevention is always the best cure.

If we'd known that voles were a major threat to gardens in this area, we would have taken every measure to keep them at bay from the start. There'll be no next time for these mini-Tribbles.

It's somewhat more impractical, however, for corporates to prevent infestation. It's not as if bad managers, programmers, or analysts cannot fit through 1/4" wire mesh.

I can't help but feel that one of the answers has to do with size. Larger gardens bring larger numbers of creatures, and more luscious plants invite hordes of plant-eaters. In smaller gardens and smaller companies, it's exponentially easier to build secure walls and perform regular maintenance to keep the groobies* out.

*My in-laws have unexpectedly expanded my vocabulary to include words like groobie (any of several small scurrying things that causes one to jump and, occasionally, to scream) and chod (a generalized term for anything that has to be scraped off a welly or which is generally transported in piles via wheelbarrow).

2 Comments:

Blogger David said...

There's only one way to get rid of a vole... (ok, I know that links to a story about moles, but what's a letter between friends?)

8:32 AM  
Blogger Little Green Potato said...

BA-BOOOM!!!

Carrott Rules!

7:53 PM  

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