People and objectives

I took far too long to learn that most managers simply don't care about anything that's not on their development review objectives, or is of interest to their manager.

I used to wonder why we'd spend tens of thousands more dollars to get work done sooner that could have been done for a fraction of the cost next week, or next month. As well as this, most managers don't care about preventing risks from becoming issues unless they have senior management attention.

It dawned on me during a performance review discussion when I was trying to explain how much money I had saved doing something a different way, how it prevented a future issue (risk mitigation), and increased the delivery rate.
The project costs had already blown out due to a massive scope versus cost and time misalignment in the planning phase, or the lack of an effective planning phase. This meant saving money was not important to him because everyone knew it was going to be well over budget by a lot more than the amount that I had saved. It was the same with the time, or delivery rate. It was well known that we could not deliver the project at the rate that was originally expected. So like my cost savings, my relatively small productivity gain was of no interest. I feel kind of silly for not realising it a long time ago. For a long time I've been working on the basis that it's always good to save money and time providing quality and scope is maintained and there are no other undesirable consequences. I think in a well disciplined organisation the two would align and it would work well for me. My focus on costs and time would align with my managers objectives and what they would get measured on so they would appreciate and recognise my contribution to their hopefully favourable review. That company was not at all disciplined. I could rattle off countless examples of State differences due to undisciplined managers and lack of leadership, ad-hoc unmanaged changes including constant changes to the metrics, no effective process documentation, conflicting and unachievable directives, and an "old boys club" in the background guarded by a paddock full of sacred cows.