Whose problem is it in the first place?

At modern work place, escalations are becoming the natural order of conducting business. Recently, a friend of mine received an escalation about his team members. It is a good lesson for all who are handling mischievous escalations in order to bring our attention into trivial matters thereby satisfying the ego of the escalation's originator.

One morning, my friend was patched into a teleconference call without advance notice. After spending couple of minutes on the call, my friend realized the meeting was regarding a promised deliverable which did not make it to the customer's inventory on time. The customer-facing  managers were shouting at my friend for missing the deliverable. This is also surprising as my friend is not directly responsible for the delivery. He is the one who is making sure the right resources are available for the customer-facing managers.

When the noise levels were gradually raising, my friend responded with a cool head. "When was this deliverable due?". The answer came promptly and quickly, "Yesterday!". So my friend said, "You are coming to me after missing the deadline. There is nothing I can do about it. If you had come to me a couple of days back when you knew there was a likelihood of missing the deadline, then I could have done something".

When you are being grilled, first ask yourself if you had anything to do with it in the first place. The real reason might be something else. Why should you let yourself be pushed down for no reason?

Tags: Musings,Escalation,Manager,Deliverable

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