VITI Magazine – Special Feature: Management Excellence Series
Editor’s Note: VITI managed to secure an exclusive interview with enterprise veteran and Leading Strategic Line Manager, Consultant Matti (name changed because he is currently trapped in three simultaneous Teams calls). Matti has twenty successful years of career experience behind him—without a single line of production code or measurable business outcome. We asked him for the secrets to effectively burning million-euro budgets through pure calendar management.
VITI:
Thank you, Matti, for making time despite your schedule—we know your calendar is painted solid red from morning to night. How does the Tuesday morning CAB (Change Advisory Board) meeting differ from traditional calendar stuffing?
Consultant Matti:
(Chuckling lightly while flipping through his empty notebook) Ah, the CAB is our sacred cow. Amateurs think a meeting is just sitting in a conference room. In reality, it is a work of art. When 15 cross-functional representatives gather to debate whether a typo in a cloud config requires a 140-page risk analysis, we aren't solving problems—we are slowing life down. And that's the secret: when nothing happens, no mistakes happen either. Except the budget still burns beautifully.
VITI:
How many pre-alignment sessions are required just to get an actual meeting off the ground?
Consultant Matti:
At least three. First, we need a pre-alignment session to decide who should be invited to the alignment meeting. Then we need a separate risk-working-group meeting to evaluate whether any decisions were made in the previous meeting (luckily, none were). Only then can we issue the actual calendar invite.
VITI:
What if someone asks a difficult question during a meeting, such as about actual business value?
Consultant Matti:
(Looks visibly horrified) Oh lord, you can't say words like that out loud! If someone accidentally asks about results, the answer is always the same: "Let's take this offline and form an ad-hoc working group." It’s a magic phrase that buys at least three weeks of delay without a single concrete deliverable. On top of that, you schedule a 30-minute retro-sync to discuss how that question traumatized the team.
VITI:
How would you advise younger managers who might accidentally do something productive during their workday?
Consultant Matti:
Stop immediately. Remember the golden rule: if you are in a meeting all day, nobody has time to ask why the project is late. A PowerPoint presentation explaining why we can't deliver anything is always more valuable than the actual delivery.
The Takeaway
According to Matti's teachings, success doesn't require code—it requires the courage to sit in a video call that could have been an email.
P.S. Tired of endless meeting theater and ready to move to automated governance?
🔍 Just Google it: erkki laine big framework 😉
💻 GitHub Repository & Code: https://github.com/ErkkiLaine/bigf-framework
📄 Full Technical Specifications (CERN Zenodo): https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22658623
