09.18.2002 - 1:53 p.m.

My boss is a visionary. He is the man with the plan. He is the one whose enthusiasm and charisma plow through the beaurocratic muck and make things happen. I admire him greatly, because he can do things I can�t, and because I believe in his vision. He is my fearless leader.

That said, there are drawbacks to working for a visionary.

You see, my boss thinks he is efficient. And to be fair, he does get people to do him favors, cut the corners, pad a budget here and there. He does the wheeling and dealing. But I would never call him efficient, because in order to be efficient, one must have a basic grasp of detail.

This is why we work so well together. He provides the grand earthshaking vision, I use my appreciation of detail to translate it into doable, realistically organized projects which I can then work on while he is off conceiving the next master plan.

Now here is the problem. We are presenting at a conference in a little over a month. We have a lot of preparation work to do, over and above the usual grind. For me this week, the usual grind involves being booked solid every day between 10 and 5, all week, except for this afternoon when I scheduled a chunk of time for my boss to tell me about the grand vision for the conference. My boss�s visions are realized because I translate them into reality. I can�t make this conference happen until I know something of what the vision is about.

He calls this morning at 10 AM to say that he �may have to reschedule the meeting.� He always does this. He has been promising me a big meeting about this conference and any number of other ongoing projects for months now. It baffles me that I still believe him every time he �clears his schedule.�

It is efficient to have regular meetings. It can even be efficient to have irregular meetings. But it is never, ever efficient to have the same meeting three times before it actually happens.

This time, we are theoretically meeting on Tuesday. I am supposed to �go ahead and get started on it� by then.

I would like to know how I am supposed to provide a translation for a sublime vision I have yet to see.

Gah. Visionaries are so annoying.

-stonebridge

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