Volunteers
Volunteers: Assignments with impossible deadlines or pointless pet-projects work best when asking for volunteers. Offer nebulous rewards with as few specifics as possible like “an appropriate amount of comp-time”, or “the thanks of upper management”, or the ultimate, vague non-reward, “a chance to work on elite company-critical research projects in the future”.
If no one volunteers, assign it to the team-member least qualified to handle the project, or failing that, the least paid. After struggling alone, the novice employee will eventually have to ask for help from your more senior team members. Such a debacle will assure that your most qualified employees will voluteer in the future for such projects, knowing that inevitablly it will be fall on their shoulders anyway.
wow – serouissly – you’re freakin’ me out….this is some good stuff – i thought i was the only person that got a kick out of this…
Wow… theres some serious straight talking from an upper manager.. way to manage those pesky employees!
I see the truth in your words.
Now, finally, I understand :-D
shit, what i thought was my boss’ incompetance turns out to be great manipulation.