Get it done, and don't fuck it up!

I had the luck to work for both big size organisation, and small startup. For the former, it takes forever to carry out feasibility study, risk analysis, specification and review. In the end, after the last thread of passion passes away, you think, fuck it, it's not worth it. Every little idea takes forever to sprint out hence no surprise many aborted. Whenever this happen, it pisses me off. However, if you take a closer look at the logic behind, it does not necessary to be the wrong thing to do, it fails at execution, not the initiative. At least, there is no explicit vulnerability, everyone is on the same (firing) line.

On the contrary, small size team doesn't have such problems, especially in startups. Everything happens in very fast speed; everyone has numerous balls in the air to juggle with at any given time. What tends to happen is there is no much time to think things through, also over-thinking is certainly not encouraged in this type of culture. You don't think weeks or months to decide how you are going to design a system, not can you afford to spend hour after hour meeting to entertain product managers who obviously is an idiot. All you have is at the end of Monday, your boss came over and tap on your shoulder, "hey, we need to get this new idea up and running at the end of this week, get it done, and don't fuck it up!". Okay, it's good someone has the unambiguous responsibility. In the back of your boss's mind, maybe subconsciously, he knew that he dropped a shit bomb to you. He trusted you to turn that bag of shit into gold - that's what we do, what choice do we have? Next Monday is the only window opportunity we have to demonstrate to this guy who is potentially willing to pay big money if he likes what he sees. If you asked why it is such a short notice for something is completely not in existing product design, you will probably get something like this, "It's complicated. Life changes, product requirement changes, we need the money, shut up and get on with it". Sounds familiar? This happens everywhere! Of course it's complicate, so next time you heard this answer, think about which type of the delegation it looks like.

There are roughly two types followups to this - hit and run or escort run.

In essence, the delegation would succeed or not, is largely decided by the way how it is done. In hit and run situation, you got an instruction and from that point on, you are pretty much on your own. The interesting thing is, if the delegation was made because he/she doesn't really have a clue how to proceed at all, you will be almost certain in the dump land with what is going to happen. It's might not be totally true that your boss is deliberately set you up for disaster, but for sure, you have just been shafted even he is genuinely hoping for a miracle. The priority goal for your boss right now is to get someone and shift the shit over with. How the task is going to turn out, it's entirely your responsibility. However, you are officially one man band, so make no mistake that whose ass is on the line if you do fuck it up. If your boss is an escort runner, you are a lucky man! He wants you to succeed, for whatever reasons you are bought into. He will make sure all the relevant information are promptly passed on to you with the best of his judgement. He will also run with you side by side to make sure you have sufficient support and what it takes actually to make this a success. If he is a manager, there might not be much he can do technically, but there are tons of stuff need to be in place to make the development going smoothly, keeping organisation around you up and running. If he is a technical authority or team leader, he will do his homework too, to make sure you don't just have an instruction, but also have the direction. Now the odds is good that you might be able to make it. Not just to make something happen, but make something right happen.

Now you decide, which part of the world you want your engineers to be, deep shitty place eventually losing trust to you or a place with blood and swear but your eyes on the ball - a successful result, and working with them to make it happen, make it real?