The Ideal Boss

Well... let’s face it. Nobody is perfect. So, what inspired me to write this? Well, oddly enough, it was after my weekend duty - as a couch potato. “You're way too free!”, some might say. Well, yes and no. Mostly yes. But I digress.

So, who do I think is the ideal boss? He is none other than 50 year old Gil Grissom. If you have to ask "Who's that?", then you're probaby not a fan of the hit television series CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) like I am. Gil Grissom is none other than a fictional character in the award-winning TV series called CSI. The character is played by William L Petersen.

Alright, I admit that I am a faithful follower of the show and now that the series has been released as a DVD set, you can bet that I have it. So, many a Saturday afternoon, I sit back and enjoy Grissom and his team of criminalists piece together evidence from crime scenes to determine how victims died and who did it.

Gil Grissom was thrust into supervising the night shift team of crime scene investigators when his former boss was unexpectedly transferred to the homicide division. As he is a hands-on kind of guy who loves to stick his fingers (and sometimes his nose) into dead bodies during an autopsy *yucks*, pushing-papers, writing appraisals and office politics is really not his cup of tea. His on-screen second in command once described him as being “politically tone-deaf”. But having watched him for over 30 episodes of the series, I can’t help but feel inspired by his management style. He’s enthusiastic, but not excitable. He’s strict but not overbearing. He is caring but not soft and most importantly, he commands a great deal of respect from his peers and subordinates.

But what really inspires me is the fact that he does not believe in supervising his subordinates but teaches them by allowing and encouraging them to experiment. In fact, if something has not been brought to the crime scene, he encourages his team to be creative and use whatever is available…. be it chemicals in their forensic kit or just pebbles on the side of a road. He challenges them to think for themselves instead of relying on the proverbial "book”. Each member of his team has a role to play and is always on his / her own to investigate or improvise, if the situation arises. Most importantly, his door is open for advice and he does not hesitate to admit when he is wrong.

He loves to study a crime scene and recreates a crime “the hard way” instead of using high-tech gadgets. For example, if he were investigating a man who had fallen from a building, he would get a dummy of the same weight as the victim and toss it out the window to determine if he jumped or was pushed. But he does not discourage his people from employing technology in their investigation. In one episode, a rising star in his team loaned a piece of equipment that cost US$10,000. The gadget was brought to capture information of particles in the air after a shooting incident in a public school. Grissom, on seeing him use that piece of equipment, gave him a conical beaker and a glass tube and challenged him to get the information without the aid of the fancy gadget. His subordinate managed to ‘capture’ the information required by crushing some chalk (commonly found in schools) into the beaker and adding a chemical from his kit. Total cost? US$10. But at the end of the episode, Grissom is seen alone in his office trying the gadget and the episode closes with him signing a form requesting for funds to purchase it.

Being in the field of Information Technology, my team and I do a lot of CSI (Computer Systems Investigation) work too. We simulate system problems in a test environment and have to be creative with what we have. It is a tough job and fortunately, we do have some "Gil Grissoms" in our midst and I’ve had the pleasure of working with a few. No, they do not make us dust for finger prints from keyboards or throw computers from the roof to find out how they crash… pardon the pun. They have inspired me to learn from the technology we currently have and encourage me to employ new technologies that I know about.

On that note, here's wishing you a fantastic work week ahead!