Stalled

Monday started with a very early call to the EMEA Sales Exec. I explained about my inability to prepare for a major review and attend his escalation call at one and the same time and he finally, but briefly, grew a pair of balls and informed me that I should cancel the review. It has taken this bleeding idiot the best part of a week to make this decision despite having arguments and evidences piled in to his in-box. On Saturday evening I even gave him a specific action to let me know one way or another by Sunday evening ...

... and yet I still find my self talking to him before I have even had breakfast today. What a Prick!

The day rumbled on and the reason for the current situation is that the costs are too high, the client wouldn't accept them, and there are contractual terms we are unlikely to be able to deliver so the Delivery Organisation will not accept them either.  For some peculiar reason the EMEA Sales Exec is only focussed on reducing cost and seems to ignore the fact that Delivery will not approve the solution.

As a result of this I have spent my day extracting and comparing cost figures to give him a detailed view of how bad the cost situation is. From my perspective this isn't really telling us anything we don't already know. It is just wasting time telling him that we are precisely £347,281 up in a certain area rather than about three hundred "K".*

 At present we are stalled with an inability to turn costs in to a compelling price and a Delivery Organisation that does not view the solution favourably. To get this machine** moving again we need to reduce costs and garner approval from our Delivery teams. His role is to pull together advice from all parties and put a high level plan and set of actions together to achieve that.

Piss arsing around with a spreadsheet of doom is not going to help!

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* This is an example and not the magnitude of the real problem. Please believe me when I say that are cost increases are SO much  worse than this.
** Do not be thinking "finely tuned racer" instead one should picture a rust ridden heap that has just spluttered to a halt outside the Scrap Yard.