mpew914's picture Submitted by mpew914 on
in

Forums

Management and Leadership

I have a situation where a person at my level in a separate part of the company is not delivering the necessary results and it is impacting the company in a negative way.  This person's management is aware of the outages but not knowledgable enough in her work to understand that she is a primary cause of the outage.

I have given some instances of feedback to the individual (did not follow the peer feedback model) and it has not yielded change.  I now need to approach her management to explain the problems and the proposed fixes.  Any advice here?  This needs to be done - I am looking for help on how to do it as professionally as possible.

Thanks.

GlennR's picture
Submitted by GlennR on Wednesday September 11th, 2013 3:09 pm

>>This needs to be done.<<

There are many things that need to be done in an organization. What may be an enormous mountain to you (or your project) may only be a tiny molehill when senior management looks at all its needs.

To answer your question. Talk to your boss. Follow his or her advice. Do not ignore his or her advice or otherwise interpret it  and then act in a way that would surprise your boss.

Next time try the peer feedback model.

I cannot speak for your organization or your culture, but in mine, taking any other course of action would court career suicide. I have seen a few do that, and rightly or wrongly, they gained a reputation as an unguided missile with poor judgement.

 

 

 

 

naraa's picture
Training Badge
Submitted by naraa on Wednesday September 11th, 2013 6:23 pm

I have found that:

1 - People don´t do stuff because they are busy with other things,

2 - People don´t do stuff because they don´t know how

3 - People don´t do stuff because they don´t want to.

So before you assume they are not doing it because they don´t want (it could be, but not necessarily) you can try (if you have not yet done so):

1 - Explain the importance of the issue for other processes (most people are completely unaware of how things impact others)

2 - Offer help.  Can you help in anyway?

3 - If you get pushed back from the two first options, inform the person you will need to escalate the issue to your boss and he/she will probably talk with his.

I agree with Glenn you need to take your bosses input on the issue. It seems the person´s boss is a peer of your boss?  So I would probably let my boss take the issue with his peer.  I also believe you need to tell the person you will talk to your boss about the issue and he/she may talk to his/hers.

Do it with caution focusing on the person´s specific behaviour or lack of execution of a task. Don´t be angry or frustrated with the person. As a manager I never liked when people came to me to complain about others.  I always made sure they had exausted all possibilities of sorting the issue out between themselves before they brought the issue to me.  I am not saying that is your case, but often the solution was just a phone call reminding the person about the deadline to get the issue done.

Remember also you need to say it 7 times so half the people will recall you saying it once.  Was the person really listening to the feedback when you deliver it?

Good luck.