B. U. G. S.

NOT SPAM

NOT SPAM

Bob, I respect your view point on this. I did promise to follow through with this, I hesitated before I wrote those words, so again your right Bob. A promise is like an oath, its a show of good faith and so far I have let myself and the cause down. I will report back by ths Saturday, I will have accomplished my mission or I will admit defeat, and bare the shame letting our cause down.

Comment by Alan B

ME:

Just don’t beat yourself up over it.

I was proud of Mark hopping all over you for it. It is an awful feeling for me to be the only one to take this seriously and not give a damn whether anybody likes me for it or not. An active comrade like Mark expects a lot of you and he has the right and the DUTY to kick your ass.

But you will also find, if you stay in this for a while, that if someone OUTSIDE the family jumps on you, you will have to pull Mark off of them before he tears their throats out.

In the end, this incident gave me a chance to make a valuable point:

Don’t promise, REPORT.

Alan B, you are going to make a lot more mistakes. Just learn from it.

From here on, this is to everybody, not just Alan B.

The whole point of having an experienced old bastard like me around is for me to tell you how reality worked out for ME. No matter how experienced I am, my background is limited until they make me God, and that job is filled.

I hate to use the “a” word twice in one artricle, but it is true that the term “follow up” and the term “being a pain in the ass” are interchangeable. I follow up a LOT. Most of my career has been as a senior staffer to busy people and dealing with other busy staffers like myself. We follow up and we follow up and we up follow, ad infinitem.

In my experience, most organizations die this way:

“Well, you didn’t call me about that.”

“I thought you would call ME about that.”

I believe we do not get reports because we are not doing anything, as Mark hints. In my experience, people who are doing anything this challenging find out something useful to say about it. Remember you are not just reporting to me, you are reporting to people less experienced than yourself.

I have spent decades in hardcore professional political work. I think you can understand how much ice the words, “But, Bob, surely you believe ME!?” cuts and how many times I have heard that phrase. If I seem a bit cynical about this, it is because I have a right to.