Both Win

A manager wants "both sides to win". Management is about judgment and often right or wrong doesn't exist as a black or white condition.
be well,
Dwika-ExecuTrain



The Answer to Last Month's Case Study #2
**Steven Cerri
(10 minute read)

I was the general manager of a corporate division office. Our company developed large software systems. I had four program managers reporting to me, each with a program worth between $3 and $5 million. Bob was one of those program managers.

I arrived at work one Monday morning at 8:00am. By 8:01am every member of the finance department was lined up outside my office complaining that someone had stolen all their PC's right off their desks.

The first question I asked was, "Had we been robbed?" By 8:15am we knew the answer. No robbery had occurred. The PCs weren't taken from the building, they had just been moved. All the PCs from the finance department had been found on the desks of Bob's engineering team. Bob's team was made up of 15 system analysts and programmers working on a 2-year program worth about $3.5 million.

I instructed the financial staff to leave the computers on the engineer's desks for now, until we could figure out exactly what happened. The financial staff was understandably ready to tar and feather Bob, while my job was to keep everybody calm. Without any real information, my goal was to make sure everybody remained calm and didn't come to their own conclusions.

By 8:30am Bob had arrived at the office, but none of his team had yet arrived. When Bob arrived I asked to see him in my office, alone. "What the heck happened, Bob?" I didn't yell it out, I just said it with emphasis on the word "What".

Bob calmly explained that his team had committed to the customer that a specific deliverable would be in the customer's hands by Monday morning. The team decided the only way to get it done was to work through the weekend. By Saturday afternoon they realized they were not going to get it done unless they had more computing power. So they took the computers off the desks of the finance department. They worked through Sunday and late into Sunday night and got the product delivered to the customer on time, Monday morning. When they left Sunday evening they were just too tired to put the PCs back on the desks of the financial staff. So Monday morning when the financial staff arrived they found no messages, no thank-you notes, no explanations, and no computers.

Bob's team had worked hard, and had delivered the product to the customer on time. The financial staff was upset but the customer was happy.

There you have the case. What would you do? Would you chastise Bob for not anticipating the problem and tell him he should have foreseen the problem? Would you praise him for getting the product to the customer on time regardless of the consequences to the staff?

Would you tell the financial staff to "just forget about it", or "get over it"? Would you stay out of it and let Bob and his team and the financial department solve their own issue to get past this? Would you get in the middle of this situation or stay out? What would you have told Bob? What would you have told the financial team?

- - - - - -My Response- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I told Bob about the situation he had placed me in. I honestly told him that I was in a quandary; on the one hand, I liked the fact that he took initiative to satisfy the customers' needs and his teams' commitment to deliver the software on schedule. On the other hand, he couldn't just take actions without attempting to smooth out the implications of those actions.

I asked him what he could have done to make things smoother. He said he could have called me to tell me what he wanted to do. I said, "True, but suppose you couldn't reach me, then what would you do?" He then said that he could have called the manager of the finance department. I then said, "True, but suppose you couldn't reach anyone from the finance department, then what?" He didn't have an answer.

I then said, "Bob lets make this simple. If you can't return everyone's computer before you and your team leave the building, then you leave a note on each desk from which you've taken a computer and you come in first thing in the morning and meet the finance people as they arrive and you make it right. It's not a big deal to make this effort. He understood and agreed.

I then told him that I did expect him to meet individually with each person in the finance department and explain and apologize for not returning the computers promptly.

I then met with all the finance department and explained what I had told Bob. I told the finance department that in fact we should all be appreciative that Bob and his team took the initiative on behave of the company and the customer, but we should at least hold Bob's feet to the fire for not communicating it better. They understood that Bob did the right thing but he just should have taken one more step in the communication process.

Bob apologized to each finance member (remember not for taking the computers but for not communicating better), the finance people understood and accepted Bob's apology, and by the end of the day, it was all forgotten. Piece of cake!

Some managers would have taken a side. Bob was right or Bob was wrong. Management is about judgment and often right or wrong doesn't exist as a black or white condition. Sometimes a manager wants "both sides to win". This was one of those situations.