Comments

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This guy needs some major mentoring to function in a professional setting. And yet somehow he's the boss!!!
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The report also says Rogoff’s management “has been described variously as East Coast, dictatorial, and unnecessarily confrontational.”

Yes, but he made the trains run on time!

/rimshot
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[Rogoff] said some board members “are just a bunch of small town mayors with nothing to do."
He's right about that.

"I cautioned him that his directness was going to run up against a very different way of interacting to which we're accustomed here in the Pacific Northwest and that he was going to have to modify his manner and understand the local culture if he was going to be successful."
Another exhibit in the Dow is pretty damn sensible file. (I assume Dow will change his mind on Rogoff if the facts change.) Spend some time living in New York and when you come back, you'll appreciate some aspects of "East Coast management" over Seattle Process. He should run for Governor some day.

I hope Rogoff is able to fix the rest.

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@6, Mussolini.
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Half the bores in this town will, given the chance, endlessly drone at you about how they lived in NYC and how much they miss that "east coast style".

Having come up in a hotel industry that was dominated by German and Swiss men with OCD and anger management issues, I can say I don't miss that sort of work environment at all.

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@7: Are you trying to educate Jack? Good luck with that.
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mistral dear, he's already the CEO. There's no promoting above that.

And I should say that for my above post about Angry European Hotel Men, I did learn from them. They were awful in the moment, but they gave one discipline. And for something like Sound Transit, which is half transit agency, half construction company, sometimes a brusque manner is not a bad thing.
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Half the bores in this town will, given the chance, endlessly drone at you about how they lived in NYC and how much they miss that "east coast style".

I grew up in New York City, and I’m more than happy to bore you with the tale of how I don’t miss either that angry, petulant, bullying, man-child behavior, nor how it is presented not as a nasty and shameful leftover from beatings in a public schoolyard, but as a “leadership style” to be praised.

Real leadership is always direct, factual, and deals with all events in a calm, cool, and poised manner. It also demonstrates and requires how all who work there will comport themselves — and treat their co-workers — with decency, dignity, and respect.

...sometimes a brusque manner is not a bad thing.

I agree, and believe we would also agree on the difference between “sometimes a brusque manner” and the behavior here.

I made the old joke about how the Fascist dictator “made the trains run on time,” because, of course, he didn’t. Foreigners who visited Italy during that time were always quick to note — once out of range of the jackboots — that the railway timetables were nothing more than polite fiction. Putting a Fascist thug aboard every train was no substitute for the operational leadership necessary to run a punctual train system. Blaring a bullying attitude isn’t leadership in the modern day, either.

I hope Sound Transit now has the true leadership it needs, and thanks go to the Board for getting some much-needed corrective action going.
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He obviously underestimated just how vindictive the cult of Joni Earl can be when confronted with a direct management style.

Dow should have better explained the Seattle process: Endless consensus building to protect everyone from personal responsibility, and if you disagree with the course of action, say nothing directly, but undermine the process until it fails.

Peter is guilty of not being Joni. And that cannot be forgiven.
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@13: Yeah, he sounds permanently unforgiven:

While Rogoff will not receive a merit-based raise this year, he did receive a 5 percent raise on January 1 that was already written into his contract.

Poor guy, so oppressed...

Please wait...

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