The good seldom succeed in opera. They are generally undone by the evil and wicked who sing tuneful arias. Thinks but of Tosca and Butterfly. Aggripina is such an opera: it is one of Handel’s “soap opera” operas. Three randy males are in love with Poppaea: Claudius Ceasar, Nero who becomes Caesar, and the true love Otho. Aggripina is Nero’s mother and she plots to put him on the throne. History tells us she succeeds, only to have Nero arrange her drowning some three years into his reign.
Aggipina is a schemer, a deceiver, a traitor to all team-work and causes other than her own. As a mother who is trying to get the best for her mad son, it is understandable, but not forgivable.
For the past many months I have coordinated a team to provide engineering to a mining client. One of the team members was invited to be part of the team at the start of the project because, as I was told: “He is a nice person and knowledgeable.”
I confess I immediately decided he was a committee queen. You know the sort: can’t wait to hear others finish a sentence in meetings but must stand up to make his own sanctimonious pronouncements which are usually irrelevant, off-topic, and incorrect. I decided his ideas were like butterflies: multiple in the summer, beautiful, but evanescent, and of no account at the end of the day.
He scurried along with the team by way of guile and wordy statements of vacuous content. Some of the team members may even have been impressed. I never was.
Now he has turned to the altar of Aggripina and Nero. The project winds down. It has been a great success. We did what we set out to do and more. Now others can take over and turn our essentially engineering research success into a large project.
Of course the original team could turn the research into a successful full-scale project. We are still beyond the cutting-edge of engineering and the talent in the original team, is in my opinion, still essential to full-scale project success. But our committee queen has turn vicious. He has suddenly turned political. He has pulled out the long knives and is making deprecatory statement about others on the team and doubting remarks about the technical approaches—that have worked but overturn his years of doubt and naysaying.
This could be explained by stress, the need to market in a tight market, pressure from his boss to take over the team of which, to date, he has been but a wordy member. Or maybe he has gotten two years older and the mind grows less decent–maybe he descends into a modern-day Nero.
I am saddened by this deflection from the team spirit and the good of the client. I am saddened by this sudden burst of Aggripina guile and machination. Maybe he will get Nero (himself) on the throne; but if he does, reality will intervene to sink him and the project within two years. I have been around long enough to be certain of this. For he talks more than he produces. He sounds good, but is not solid.
I will keep you informed. Meanwhile, maybe this parable (a true one) may give warning to mining clients everywhere to be on the look-out for the Committee Queen who sounds good, but who wears the dresses of Aggripina and has the mind of Nero. Opera is fun on a DVD watched with copious brandy; but is is deadly in real life when you are paying the bill.
