Hi Bob, I'm the IT Director of a $300 million dollar company. The CEO will sometimes say the following to me regarding a new, ill-conceived IT project assignment: "Let's do it the hard way." Translation: "I've heard your concerns, but don't care what this project does to you, your priorities and those other projects I assigned you." I love my CEO but he's not big on planni Hi Bob,I’m the IT Director of a $300 million dollar company. The CEO will sometimes say the following to me regarding a new, ill-conceived IT project assignment:“Let’s do it the hard way.” Translation: “I’ve heard your concerns, but don’t care what this project does to you, your priorities and those other projects I assigned you.”I love my CEO but he’s not big on planning. He’s not even little on planning. We have no IT plan. Really.– Living in Chaos Dear Living …Among the more endearing of various types of leader is the one who has no idea of what it takes to implement an idea and doesn’t want one either. These characters love to have brilliant ideas so they can pass them along to someone else to make them happen. If that person objects that they already have a job that’s full time and then some, the usual answer is, “Get it done or I’ll find someone else who can.”Your options are limited, and saying either “no” or “but” probably aren’t any of them (as if you needed me to tell you that). Here are two alternatives that might work. No guarantees, but they might be worth a try. Option #1: Say no. Seriously. Look your CEO dead in the eye and say, “This isn’t going to happen. Let me tell you why. Right now we have four more number one priorities than we have people to undertake them. I’ll be happy to add this to the pile. We’ll get to it after we clear away the others. If that isn’t good enough, tell me which of our current projects to kill and I’ll kill them to make room for this. If that isn’t good enough, tell how big a check you’re willing to write to get it done and I’ll find a systems integrator willing to handle it. But if you want it to happen with the resources we already have, they’re all very busy already — nobody is just sitting in his or her cubicle waiting for a project to come along.”This has one big advantage. Once you succeed at it once you’ll succeed at it again. Once you succeed at it a few times you might even persuade the CEO to let you institute a real IT governance process.If this isn’t a workable alternative, here’s one more. Say, “That’s a terrific idea. Let me get together with the people who will have to make this happen to figure out what it will take to do it and I’ll get back to you with a plan and a schedule.” Do that. The plan and schedule will be based, in part, on when resources will free up to do it. It will show all the other projects currently using those resources. If the CEO doesn’t like the schedule, say, “Okay, no problem, but then I need your help, because as you can see, there’s nobody available to work on this right now. I can certainly hire more staff if that’s what you want, or I can bring in a systems integrator, but both of those options will cost money we don’t have budgeted. How do you want me to handle this?”It will be very difficult for your CEO to wriggle off that hook once you have it set and baited. It’s done, and done often, and I doubt your CEO will be tremendously fond of you for doing it, but the alternatives all sound even worse.Good luck. – Bob ——– Technology Industry