What a bunch of useless c .....

What does leadership mean to you? There are whole tomes on the subject and a number of different styles but fundamentally it all distills down to the action of heading up a team of individuals and ensuring that they complete a set activities. Now you can do this well, badly or Indian style and it is the latter that I have been experiencing this week.

One of my latest projects is being "lead" by an Indian team. They are responsible for the overall design and my role in this iteration of the project is to provide local consultancy. So far I have done my best to get an idea of what is going on and have attended calls and read relevant documentation. To be honest there seems to be very little that needs to be done in the UK other than provide career management for 30 or 40 individuals  as everything else should be delivered from the chaps in Bangalore.

With these thoughts in mind I drafted an e-mail and requested clarification of scope and assumptions and patiently waited. I also ensured that the Indians were aware that they were developing the solution in this round and we were just here to provide advice and sanity check their numbers ...

... On this morning's call my patience finally gave out. I am fed up with the Indian method of leadership which appears to have the following tenets:-

• Failing to provide any direction to the team
• Failing to answer relevant questions
• Ignoring clear statements of activity ownership
• Ignoring clear, expert direction on redeployment of personnel
• Making ridiculous and untested assumptions that are unworkable

When I was asked if I had any questions I finally gave them both barrels. I pointed out that I had repeatedly requested a clear overview of their UK solution requirements and was still waiting for an answer. I pointed out that I was lined up to review a set of costs on Monday but that activity had absolutely no value if there was no solution description to provide a frame of reference for the aforementioned costs.

At this point a member from the Indian team advised that he sent over a solution description this morning. The stupid fucker hadn't counted on the fact that I had taken time to review that pile of crap and was able to promptly respond that there wasn't a single reference to the UK in the entire fucking worksheet and it was therefore of no value to me at all.

At this point I stopped and watched the tumbleweed roll across the aural vista. Eventually the Senior Sales Executive gathered his thoughts* and suggested that the lead team were challenged by the short time frame and would soon be able to provide some clarity and that I shouldn't let their lack of delivery slow me down...

... That is a bit like telling a Fireman that  they should let a lack of water slow down their extinguishing activities.

Fuckwits !

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* that is never going to be a lengthy activity