So, you’re asking about Ryan Farrell. Yeah, I remember that name, alright. It wasn’t so much a person, for me, as it was a whole period of my work life, a “methodology” he pushed down our throats. My “practice” with the “Farrell Method,” as he called it, was something else, let me tell you.
He came in, this consultant guy, full of big talk about “synergy” and “streamlining workflows.” We were all supposed to adopt his grand system. On paper, it sounded fancy. In reality? It was a complete mess. We spent more time filling out his ridiculous forms and attending “alignment meetings” than actually doing our jobs. Everything had to go through three new layers of approval. Productivity just tanked, man.
My own journey with this started when my department was chosen as the pilot. Lucky us, right? I tried, I really did. I sat through the training sessions, tried to understand the flowcharts that looked like spaghetti. I remember spending a whole week trying to get a simple design change approved.
- First, the “Initiation Form RF-001.”
- Then, the “Cross-Departmental Impact Assessment RF-002.”
- Followed by a mandatory “Stakeholder Review Meeting” that always got rescheduled.
It was nuts. My actual work, the stuff I was good at, just piled up while I was wrestling with this bureaucratic monster he’d created.
The breaking point for me was when a critical project got delayed by two weeks, purely because of his system. And guess who got the heat? Not Farrell, no. Us, the folks on the ground. I had a pretty frank conversation with my manager, laid it all out. Said this wasn’t working, that it was actively harming our output. Nothing changed. Farrell was the golden boy at the time, brought in by the higher-ups.
So, what did I do? I started looking for a new job. Took a few months, but I found something way better, a place that actually trusted its employees to, you know, work. I handed in my notice, and the exit interview was a joke. They asked if I had any feedback on the “Farrell Method.” I just smiled.
The funny thing is, I heard through the grapevine a year later that they finally scrapped his whole system. Cost them a fortune, all that wasted time and effort. And Farrell? Apparently, his contract wasn’t renewed. I guess my “practice” and “record” of his method wasn’t unique. Sometimes, you just gotta live through something to see how bad it really is. And man, that was a bad one.
