On Thu, 23 Apr 2015 10:00:41 +0000 (UTC),
(Andrew Gabriel) wrote:

One of my managers early in my career had been a captain or some rank
in the army where he was leading a bunch of soldiers. His ability to
motivate us was incredible - he had us slogging our guts out, and
enjoying every moment of it. He didn't have a clue about what we did
technically - he trusted us when we provided him info on progress, etc,
and we trusted him to look after us, which he did superbly. I learned
a lot from him, and put it into use when I was managing a team.

We had an ex-army bloke (I think he had been a WO or somesuch) as
manager at one of the music businesses I worked for in the early days.
It didn't work out so well for us, I'm afraid. He "managed" to get
everybody against him. His one weakness was his refusal to use the
works canteen and to bring in his own, personal supply of coffee and
dried milk. One of the engineers (not me!) spiked his dried milk with
Sennakot.

He started getting the runs and becoming dehydrated so he drank more
coffee...

After a week or so, someone took pity on him and swapped in a new
suppy of dried milk.

He left soon after that but unfortunately I wasn't there to see him
go.

Nick