Читать книгу Organization Development - Donald L. Anderson - Страница 88

“It was about a year ago when the first rumblings started of ‘I hate Melissa.’ Now it’s a daily occurrence. I’m sure they are all complaining about how unhelpful I am, but in some respects, I don’t really care. When I first took this job, we had lawsuits going on because of our failure to have accurate compensation practices. That’s also when the internal audit department started investigating us. People were getting paid inappropriately when they never made any sales at all. Salespeople were putting through discounts that were costing the company millions of dollars. We were shipping products to customers that never ordered them, paying the salesperson’s commission, and then paying for return shipments and apologizing to customers. That’s why we now require purchase order numbers so no one can game the system. I’m not going to go so far as to say that there was illegal activity happening, but that’s only because I can’t prove it. By law, we must have a customer signature on every sales order. That’s not a personal attack I’m making on them.”

“What they really hate is the fact that they can’t get away with anything anymore. We now have controls and processes in place to make sure that I can confidently stand behind every order that goes through and every sales commission that gets paid. They may hate it, but that’s what’s best for the company. It’s like dealing with a child that doesn’t want to do his homework or take her medicine. Someone has to be the adult around here, and that’s me. I’m the bad guy, and that’s fine, I can take it. What they really want is to boss me around like they did Savanna, and for me to be their administrative help, cleaning up their errors behind them, wiping up their messes. Sorry, I’m not going to do that. Maybe if they experience the pain of going back and doing it again correctly, they will pay more attention and do it right next time.”

“They think that somehow I have Neil’s ear and his attention more than they do. That’s not true. I have had knock-down, drag-out arguments with Neil, but he’s the boss and he makes the final call. Every single rule and process in place today is with Neil’s support and approval. He delegates implementation of those rules to my team and expects everyone to comply. When the compliance reports show any discrepancy, I’m the one answering to Neil as to why I let someone get away with an order that has a compliance problem. There is pressure on me, too.”

“What we can all agree on is that our systems are very poor. The day I started, I put together a quality team to clean up the incorrect data in our database and get it right. Unfortunately, that requires the time and help of the other directors. I don’t know everyone in this entire organization or the history of every sale that they made. In the past year, we have cleaned up 11 of the top 20 most common reports that we publish. Things are getting better.”

“I can work with the others, but Renee is a different story. She has had members of my team in tears. My best systems analyst, Olivia, quit last month because of her. I know that I’ve made her life more difficult because of some of the things she’s done to me and my team. The rest of my peers are reasonable, but Renee, I just can’t work with her.”