Those of us with English degrees are very greived that Acme is currently participating in two 100% Effort initiatives, and considering two more. These are supposed to be company-wide initiatives that preempt all other demands and get complete support. It strikes me that we cannot do more than one thing with 100% of our resources, and so we are set up to fail.

One of these initiatives has to do with our service to an extremely important customer. I have been telling everyone that we cannot meet the service goal set for us without changing some of our basic practices (which dearly need improvement), but this week my boss explained to me that since we were doing acceptably before a few nasty circumstances colluded to ruin our service, all we need to do is wait out these twin disasters and we will look pretty good with zero changes being made.

Which is pretty depressing, even though true. It means that all the things I imagined being changed to make us the supplier of choice do not have to happen, and so probably won’t, and so I will probably be stuck coping with them.

But we are still quite early in the 100% Effort campaign. I may be able to promote a few good things before we are all done by the end of July. Unless we reach the “okay” level with this initiative, and I am conscripted into another one before this one is officially over.

When I am in charge I will fire anyone who is such bald-faced liar as to propose two 100% Effort initiatives concurrently.