Saturday, 24th January 2009.

All your temps are belong to us

Management lessons I learned from Science Fiction...

1. Monitor your high performers very carefully

Example: Revenge of the Sith

Forget what you thought you knew about prophecy, destiny, or heavy-breathing S&M-loving gimps who parade across the universe exercising divine wrath with a lightsaber. Anakin's fall to the dark side has nothing to do with that whole Balance of the Force garbage, and he doesn't turn because of a desire to avoid the visions of death that haunt his dreams. No, the seeds are sown way back in The Phantom Menace, with Obi-Wan's initial reluctance to train Anakin: a task he only undertakes, in the end, because of a promise to Liam Neeson on his death bed.

Saddled with a reluctant mentor, then, Anakin's fall from grace is more or less inevitable when you examine the casual dismissal of his raw talent at the hands of Master Kenobi. Rather than nurture his obvious natural gift, Obi-Wan chooses instead to keep him 'in check' by being as critical as possible. He ascertains that it is Anakin's abilities that have made him arrogant, when the resentment is in fact entirely natural, caused as it is by what seems to be a constant failure of recognition. Obi-Wan's reluctance to allow Anakin to make his own mistakes has led to the young warrior feeling stifled and suppressed, and no amount of romping in the meadow with Natalie Portman is able to quell his teenage angst.

The turning of Anakin Skywalker from Jedi to Sith therefore has nothing to do with prophecy, but is instead a direct result of poor performance management. If you want to go further still, don't stop with Obi-Wan: go straight to the Jedi Council, who evidently understood what was going on but who apparently did nothing to guide or train the reluctant tutor, nor to step in when it became obvious that his work was substandard. Nonetheless, the final blame has to lie with the mentor. If Obi-Wan had given Anakin a little more free reign and trust (as he seems to be doing by the time Revenge of the Sith begins, but by this time the damage has been done) then the whole messy saga might have been avoided. Lesson learned: always look after your star performers. Sometimes, they're more high maintenance than you think.



2. Under-promise, over-deliver

Example: Star Trek

There's a concept in Star Trek known as the Scotty Factor. It came about when you consider the promises that Montgomery Scott - the Enterprise's chief engineer - would make to his captain. When there was work to be done, Scotty would estimate how long the job would take to complete, and then when asked for a figure, would produce an estimate that was far higher (usually a factor of four). One particular example occurs in The Search For Spock, when Kirk asks how long it will take to re-fit the ship. Scotty's response is "Eight weeks, Sir. But you don't have eight weeks so I'll do it for you in two."

This particular response lacks a certain subtlety, and the gruff engineer's tendency to exaggerate with mathematical precision meant that it was relatively easy to spot when he was bluffing. Nonetheless, the concept of under-promising and then over-delivering is an important one: it is far, far better to follow bad news with good news than to have to renege on the optimistic estimate that you initially provided. There are few worse things in business than a broken promises, and many corporate relationships have been irreparably damaged because of them.

So the best thing to do? Say you can do less than you actually can, or inform them that it will take less time than you think it will (and if the deadline you give is unacceptable, haggle), and then no one will be disappointed - and things will look good when you get the job done earlier. Targets will be met, customers happy and morale improved. Just don't go too far, or you are likely to be found out, and it will take tact and diplomacy to convince the powers that be that your outrageously inaccurate estimate was merely a very strong err on the side of caution. Or you could resort to blunt honesty - as Montgomery Scott does when Kirk asks him whether he always multiplies his repair estimates by four, by answering "Certainly Sir. How else could I keep my reputation as a miracle worker?".



3. Recruit to replace

Example: Doctor Who / Torchwood

(Warning - spoiler heavy...)

The end of the second season of Torchwood, rather surprisingly, saw the death of two main characters. Owen Harper was technically already dead, having been shot by Jim Robinson some weeks before. After this, Jack took the drastic step of bringing him back with the Resurrection Gauntlet (amazing equipment, silly name - it sounds like something you'd find on WOW). Owen became the antithesis of Jack: permanently undead, as opposed to permanently alive. He eventually died during a power station incineration, moments after reconciling with Tosh, who was dying of a gunshot wound inflicted by Jack's rogue brother.

Cut to a few months later, and the end of Doctor Who, season 4 AR (fourth after the revival). Having survived a Dalek invasion, Martha Rose and Jack Harkness wander out into the sunshine, as he propositions her - not for a date, but with a job offer. In the midst of all the excitement we'd almost forgotten he was recruiting, and as Martha puts on her 'thoughtful' face, the two of them are suddenly accosted by an exuberant Mickey Smith, who evidently wants to join the party as well. And so the three of them stroll into the distance along a leafy path, as the seeds are sown for the next season of Torchwood - only to be instantly uprooted with the news that Freema Agyama was defecting to ITV.

The news that Martha was not going to be joining Torchwood is something of a blessing for Jack's little band. The simple truth is that she cannot hold a candle to the man she was due to replace. Owen, although he was an obnoxious little prick whose accent got more and more cockney with each episode, was an extremely capable Doctor who could handle himself in a fight and who also had an extensive knowledge of extra-terrestrial anatomy. Martha may have saved the world, but she's a head case. And don't get me started on Mickey. He may have become fairly competent at hacking and he even brought down a few of the cybermen, but he's a meandering buffoon who couldn't hold a candle to Toshiko's technological brilliance.

The point is that if you're losing a high performer, you don't replace them with an incompetent underachiever unless you really have no other choice, and I'm quite sure that Captain Harkness does. The time that would need to be invested in training these people is time that would be better spent saving the world, and even if he manages to get a decent staff development package in place, they're not the sort of people you'd want to depend on in a crisis, at least not the sort of crisis that tends to envelop Torchwood. Viewed in this light, Jack's consideration of Mr Smith and Miss Jones as possible replacements for his brilliant (if tiresome) fallen comrades is revealed as being hideously inappropriate - and that's before you get to the fact that practically everyone on the show is a bisexual nymphomaniac. I have two words: Mickey. Naked. The sick bowl is over there.