Submitted by engineer76 on
in
Forums
I just received a request from one of my peers to check with her before transmitting data from her team. Our Depts have significant interaction. On any given day there will be a handful of meeting with a couple of her staff and a couple of my staff - using data and making decisions. I believe complying with her request will cripple organizational ability to act.
Here is the email:
"I kindly request you to check with me first before relaying information or data obtained from my staff to the senior leadership. This helps to avoid inconsistencies and promotes accountability."
Does anyone have any thoughts on how to respond?
Sounds reasonable
Dear engineer76,
This request sounds reasonable to me so perhaps there are more details you can share which would help us understand your particular concern.
Often my team will share information for a specific purpose and then find it is communicated to others without the same context causing isses. A recent example is we needed to quickly respond to a request for data that was in a working document that was not well formatted but was able to satisfy the request. I would not have wanted that circulated further and if it was needed I would have wanted to have updated for the wider audience.
The peer has indicated it is her team's data so I am unclear as to why you would be relaying as would it not better to come from her so that she may respond to any inquiries. If this routine and standard for your company then a meeting to discuss what can and cannot be sent without her approval might be helpful.
Have you tried peer O3s?
Dawe
They are your peers directs
I'd respond in person. Tell the peer it's a great idea, ask peer to instuct their directs to first email them and copy you on the email. Then agree on a time that Peer will either respond to you that document is ok to send, or you will forward on assuming they approved.
It actually sees a litte odd to me that you recieve the document from peers directs
Interesting devevlopment
There is an interesting development that is surely related - yesterday my boss told me this same peer did not feel I and my other peers are sufficiently collaborative with her. This was a bit of a surprise as the rest of us do not feel that way (so far as I know and was able to confirm).
It seems a Peer O3 is needed. I will definitely discuss looking for more detail about what she wanst and does nto want to go through her.
Also, regarding comments above -
Her department produces volumes of reports (literally - we fill shelves on a regular basis). I don't review the reports, but my staff use these reports to plan and execute projects (I currently have 147 projects worth $1.05B). If all this info is to go through her, she would be locked up about 30 hours every week, just presenting reports/information to my staff (not an exaggeration). In part that is why she has 30 directs/skips and I have 80 directs/skips/overskips. It seems to me my peer doesn't trust her department.
I would prefer to operate on a mode where the work produced by her skips is relayed from her directs to my directs - and she and I track progress using dashboards and reporting, discuss exeptions, etc.
Give Her What she Wants
My response is still the same. If you can still make your deadlines, how she spends her time should not concern you. My guess is she will probably quickly come to the realization that what she is asking for is not realistic if deadlines are to be met.
Agree to what she asks but get her to commit that she can deliver as promissed so deadlines can be made.
Although I don't agree with
Although I don't agree with her reasons (her staff are clearly accountable if they give out wrong info) if her objective is to validate more information personally then you should accomodate this if you can do it in a way that doesn't impact on your teams results.
If she can commit to quickly authorising dissementation of information and rarely highlights issues then no problem. If things get held up, or are constantly being amended/contradicted then it's an issue to address.