Manager of the FUTURE!

[sesquipedality]

In Star Trek: Deep Space 9, there is a certain pattern in crisis conversations.  Usually they are between Cisco and O'Brien and go something like this:

Cisco: Is there any way to re-energise to molestators?
O'Brien: Well I could reroute the capitulation circuit to cross-cut the tachyon pulse which should reverse the direction of chronon emissions.
Cisco: Good plan, chief.  How long will it take?
O'Brien: Two days
Cisco: You have half an hour.

Is it just me, or is demanding things faster than people say they can do them not a very useful management technique?  Is there something about stating a time limit with sufficient authority that slows down time, or something?

Comments

[simont]

Well, hold on there. Surely in the typical Star Trek scenario the point is that you only have half an hour because that's when the entire station/universe/plot (delete as appropriate) will blow up if it isn't at least somewhat fixed? In which case, well, those are the facts and it's not clear that the captain's approach of communicating them clearly is the worst available option. If they had instead said 'fine, no pressure' and half an hour later *BANG*, that's surely a worse outcome.

It's a terrible management technique in real life because (typically) things are not in fact that life-and-death urgent and instead the manager is imposing extra urgency by fiat, so that if the employee doesn't get it done in half an hour the worst that will happen is that they lose a job that they've just discovered isn't that awesome anyway.

(Of course in real life there's also the possibility that it actually is fairly urgent because of the manager's previous failure to deal with something in a timely fashion. The typical suggested response is 'lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine', which may or may not actually work in reality but certainly doesn't hold water in the case of imminent station explosion.)

[brinker.livejournal.com]

All quite true as well. Life and death does kind of change the importance of certain things.

[sesquipedality.livejournal.com]

I don't feel this argument is legitimate. Shouldn't the conversation rather go "Shit, we don't have time to do that then. Let's think of something else."

If my life depended on my copying out Lord of the Rings by tomorrow evening, I'm pretty much doomed, regardless of how much Commander Cisco shouts at me.