Right, let’s talk about this “Gordon Mar” business. It’s one of those things that pops up, everyone gets excited, and then, well, you see what actually happens.
My Run-In with the Whole Gordon Mar Idea
So, I first bumped into the Gordon Mar concept, or maybe it was more of a methodology, a few years back. There was this new manager, super enthusiastic, fresh out of some fancy seminar, and he kept dropping “Gordon Mar” like it was going to solve world hunger. “We need to Gordon Mar our processes!” he’d say. Honestly, at first, I just nodded along. Sounded like every other buzzword that comes and goes, you know?
But then, it became mandatory. We were all herded into meeting rooms for presentations about the “Gordon Mar principles.” Lots of slick slides, talk about synergy, efficiency, blah blah blah. The core idea, as far as I could tell, was about radical transparency and some kind of hyper-detailed task tracking. Seemed okay on the surface, I guess. Who doesn’t want to be efficient?
Getting Down to Brass Tacks with Gordon Mar
Then we actually started trying to do it. That’s where the wheels kinda fell off. The first thing was the “Daily Mar,” as they called it. Not just a quick stand-up. Oh no. We had to list every single tiny thing we planned to do, estimate it down to the minute, and then report back on every deviation. It took forever. My actual work time got squeezed because I was too busy preparing for and attending the “Daily Mar.”
- Then there was the “Mar Board.” A massive digital board where every task, no matter how trivial, had to be logged, with about ten sub-fields for each. Who requested it, why, expected outcome, potential blockers, mood of the requester – okay, maybe not the mood, but it felt like it.
- And the “transparency” part? Meant everyone could see everyone else’s “Mar Board.” Which just led to a lot of people judging how busy others looked, or micromanaging tasks that weren’t even theirs. It was a mess.
The Big “Aha!” Moment (Not in a Good Way)
The breaking point for me, or at least when I knew this Gordon Mar thing was a dud, was when we spent a whole afternoon arguing about the correct way to categorize a five-minute task on the Mar Board. A whole team, hours wasted, over something that should have just been… done. Productivity, ironically, seemed to plummet. People were more focused on looking like they were following the Gordon Mar rules than actually getting work done.
It wasn’t making things better; it was just adding layers of bureaucracy. The folks who were already good at their jobs found it frustrating, and the folks who weren’t so good just got better at making their Mar Board look impressive.
So, What Did I Learn from Gordon Mar?
Looking back, this Gordon Mar adventure was a classic case of a system designed by someone who probably never had to use it in the trenches. It’s like a lot of these grand ideas in big companies. They sound good in a PowerPoint, but in practice, they just don’t account for, well, reality. People aren’t robots; you can’t just “optimize” them with a fancy new system named after some guru.
It fizzled out, eventually. Like these things often do. We slowly stopped updating the Mar Board with such religious fervor, the Daily Mars got shorter, and eventually, we just went back to, you know, working. It was a good reminder that sometimes, the old ways, the simpler ways, are there for a reason. Not every problem needs a new, complicated “solution” named after someone.
