I know that like a lot of people I put off things that I don't like/can't handle/am uncomfortable with, and the biggest thing that I put off are phone calls. Especially when someone tells me I have to do it.
Last Thursday I made a phone call that I was supposed to make back in December - and by "supposed to" I mean that my boss had told me to back around the 7th. He had asked me twice more before I did it, and today we had a meeting with the person I had to call - which went well as meetings go. The problem is, we should've had this meeting a month ago. And that 1 month means a 2 month delay in my project.
That math not make sense to you? Well maybe it would help to know that the person I was meant to be calling was a city zoning official in charge of the Special Permit that we need for the project to move forward as we've designed it. City bureaucracy math is the best math.
And by best I mean the most ridiculous - and honestly, they know it.
But I digress.
The meeting went fine and my boss and I came out with a clear understanding of how we should proceed - but we also knew that we were now susceptible to a new version of the ordinance that we wouldn't have been if I had made the call when I was told to (and when I said I would).
The gist is, we need to get a by-right Building Permit before we can apply for the Special Permit. The by-right permit is a given (obviously, it's "by-right"), but the Special Permit is subject to the whim of a board of elected officials and is not a sure thing. At the minimum it can take 6 months (which admittedly we're 3 months into). By the math of the bureaucracy we can file in March at the earliest since our current communication with the city has us on the board docket in March (if I get a lot done before Valentine's Day). It would be better to be on the docket in January - which if I had made the call in early December (and then rushed a lot) is where we'd be.
If I had made the call in December we should be on the docket now and be getting permission to build on or about March 1st. The reason is long and involved and has to do with filing deadlines - and newspaper print times (stop the presses). As it stands now we'll get permission by about May 1st (if all goes well).
It may be that our client will be fine with that. Or it maybe he'll be pissed. Either way, my boss feels that we're in an embarrassing situation because of my holding off on making a phone call. If there's one thing that my boss hates it's being embarrassed, and he spent 15 minutes making that clear to me while he reamed me out on the steps of city hall.
Honestly, I had been feeling good about my work performance these last few days. Then he lit into me and I felt like all the work I had done on the drawings and specifications, and the work that my team had done (because I don't work alone) had gotten me nowhere. There wasn't much I could say to him other than to apologize and tell him that I'd do better, which didn't seem like much to him at the moment.
There's really not much else I can do really. I just have to try to do better as the project moves forward and try not to make mistakes - of course I have the risk that a mistake made in the past will come back to haunt me later. The "timebomb" effect - which is becoming more of a minefield on my other project, but that's another story.
I keep thinking of my first boss, and one of the most clear lessons she tried to teach me was to make all your phone calls in the morning. That way you had the rest of the day to work on whatever you had to do, and the person you called was on the hook for getting back to you. I don't know why I haven't learned that lesson yet, even though I haven't forgotten it in all this time.
The main point my boss was trying to make was that I wasn't leading the process. I wasn't leading the client, or the city zoning officials, and I wasn't leading my boss. I've been following, and "following" is not a skill an Architect should have.
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