this post was submitted on 12 May 2024
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@Seagoon_ Feeling really annoyed at an acting middle manager at our workplace right now.
He's terrible at communicating. He refuses to listen to people. He makes decisions and orders people to do stuff without asking anyone if the thing he wants to do is even possible.
There's a whole string of bad decisions as a result, and everyone else is left to clean up his mess afterwards.
For example, there's an event that was scheduled on a particular date. An email was sent out to the people (outside the organisation) who are likely to attend.
Before that email was sent, he decided to postpone it. Just he didn't let anyone know until after the emails were sent.
Another example. One of my colleagues was told she had to drop everything to find leads for a new product that he decided to launch in two weeks. He then blamed her for not coming up with enough leads.
He's decided the IT team needs to roll out a new automated reporting system right now. The IT department has already said it's not adding any features to that system because they're getting rid of it in the next year or so. They don't answer to him, and will just refuse to do it. So there's a whole series of meetings now planned because he's insisting that it has to happen.
There's also a whole marketing campaign that the marketing team thinks is a stupid idea that won't work, because they tried it last year and it didn't work. He's insisting they do it anyway.
And there's a whole string of decisions like this.
The thing is, I'm not sure he's aware at just how demotivating his unique management style is to those around him.
Sorry for the rant, I'm just feeling really frustrated right now.
Sounds like he's trying to justify his own job/position. Absolute wanker
@StudChud Even though I'm not directly in his department (thankfully!), I am affected by his decisions.
I mentioned to a colleague today: "Have you noticed <manager> has a habit of springing decisions on people, and not taking things into consideration even if they have been explained to him?"
She said yes, and gave me some of her own examples.
So it has been noticed by people โ although unfortunately the people who he answers up to are new in the role as well.
Earlier today, I was in a meeting with <Manager> and some people from the business sales team.
Marketing had wanted to run an end of financial year promotion for business customers.
<Manager> overruled them and decided that they should instead run a discount campaign aimed at consumers. (It's a small team that doesn't have the resources to do both.)
(This despite the fact that he said himself a couple of months ago that he wanted to focus more on business sales.)
(<Manager's> idea is the stupid campaign they don't want to do.)
I explained to the sales team that because the consumer discount campaign was happening โ the one marketing doesn't want to do โ there wouldn't be a promotional campaign for business.
This apparently hadn't occurred to <Manager>, even though it was clearly explained to him. (I was in the meeting when it happened.)
"Well, ummmm, maybe we can do both?"
And then this afternoon I had a meeting with a colleague. One of <Manager's> brilliant ideas is for her to cross-promote a product from <Manager's> division with a product from another division.
"Okay, well before you go too deep into this, you might just want to be aware that the IT systems in <Manager's division> aren't integrated with the systems from the other division."
She gives me a mildly horrified look. What do you mean not integrated, she asks?
"Many years ago, <Manager's division> used to be a completely separate organisation. So it has its own separate IT systems. That means its own customer database, its own accounting package, its own content management system. Many of the platforms are different to the ones the rest of the organisation uses.
"*Nothing* is integrated.
"IT is planning to eventually move everything across to the same systems, but in the meantime any data that you want to move from one system to the other has to be done manually.
Her face dropped as she realised her workload was now at least triple what she had expected. Why didn't <Manager> tell me any of this?
And that's a very good question...
sounds like a relic from the old organisation... this is the problem when mergers/takeovers/restructures happen and there's too much autonomy left in the wrong places.
hugs
keep a diary and look for other work while you are there