Bill manages a cutting edge development team based in Durham N.C., Amsterdam Holland and Haifa Israel. The team is working on Version 21.1 to be released in 3 weeks

A crisis in India has arisen with version 19.5 and 3 engineers need to fly to the client. This will be tremendous wear and tear on the other members of the development team.

Hank (Holland) said this pressure reminded him of a joke and proceeded to tell a very off colour joke; naturally, Chicago based Nancy White, EVP HR jotted this down as an urgent “actionable item” for her upcoming 1/1 with Hank. After the joke, Hank  said that the decision to bend over backwards to accommodate the Indian customer was “idiotic”.

Hadas (f) from Haifa criticized Mike for “poor judgement”. She then lectured for 20 minutes on priority management and “what I vud do if I was in your shoes”. She then  asked Bill: “Have you fallen on your head”? and “Are you crazy”?

Bill was flabbergasted at the pushback. He expected is team to perhaps disagree with the decision yet commit to make it happen.

Which is exactly what was happening, except Billy-boy did not understand it. Hank’s bluntness and Hadas’ lecture and verbal pushback had nothing to do with what both will DO.