Company Prima Donnas

Working in an MNC has its fair share of challenges. Due to the size of the company, many challenges are understandable, and even expected. However, nothing prepares you for the company Prima Donna that you meet. I have met my fair share of Prima Donnas, but the one in my department is one mind boggling sample.

What's a company Prima Donna? They are the people who love being in the limelight, think they are better than everybody else, insist their own way, claim credit for what others have done and bully them into doing work for them, while refusing to contribute to any other projects that do not raise their profile in the company. They are self centred political creatures who are out to "dazzle" higher management with self promotion while unabashedly bullying others into doing work for them and insisting they agree that she's the best thing that happened to the company. Any of these sound familiar?

Well, part of my duties in my business unit is collating business review reports from the various countries, getting respective sector managers to look at the country reports, compile them into sector reports and send them over to me. I'll collate them for the Asia Pacific region and send them over the headquarters as the business review report for AP.

It was quite a challenge to get our country managers and sector managers to keep to their deadlines at first. They are already bogged down with too much work and administration, reports and presentations. However, they soon learned that I would hound them, call them, bug them and stalk them until they got it done and that it was easier for them to comply to the deadline than to try to run away from it. After a few months, people were actually all keeping to their deadlines and we have never been late in submitting our report to our headquarters after the first couple of months. My boss was pleased, and things were going well.

When I say all, I mean all but one, none other than our department prima donna. She simply ignored all my reminders of the deadline, and for the first 2 reports, I actually completed her sector report for her. The first time I rationalised that she was unfamiliar with the format (as were all of us) and was busy with a launch. The second time, she was on business travel so I gave her another chance. Third time around, I wised up to the fact that she did not even care about the report and simply expected me to complete it for her.

I put my foot down, reported it to my boss, and got her consensus that meeting the deadline was the priority, and that missing information would have to be provided after the initial submission. I communicated to the department Prima Donna that if she did not meet her deadline, I would have to submit AP's business review without her sector report, and copied my boss and our group operations manager on the same email. She promptly completed her report within the same evening and sent it over.

After that incident, she was on time for all her business reports until this month. Plans for her "top" programs were falling through (due to her lack of leadership to the country launching the program, and due to insufficient business development of the program). Initially scheduled to be launched in Aug 2006, It was postponed to Oct 2006, and now again to Feb/Mar of 2007. She had little to show for her sales volume. Somehow, she had managed to get herself involved in another high level project in AP, and management in the States were impressed at the number of high level projects she was taking on, without realising the sad state of those programs in AP. Heady with the power of having top management's approval, she reverted to her bullish tactics and once again to ignoring my requests for her to complete her report on time.

I gave her a deadline, reminding her in a text message that my priority was submitting AP's report on time, and if she should fail to submit it by noon today, I would have to submit the report without her sector report. She replied promptly with a single word, "cool". I couldn't believe this was the attitude of a high level executive in a company that placed importance on integrity and fostering respect for your colleagues and peers. I was stunned. We are talking about a woman in her mid thirties who is married with a son, has an international career, and worked in global FMCG companies...

Since that was her decision, it was not my place to do her job for her and I still had a job to do. I had to inform my boss that I would be submitting the region's report to our headquarters without the commercial sector report, and conveyed my communication with the sector manager to her. After I had cooled down a little, I decided that the text message warranted a response. I picked up my phone and sent her a text that I had made note of her decision, and informed her that I had informed my boss of her decision as the report was a representation of AP's performance to our head company. There was no reply until an hour later when I received a reply that she had sent her report to me.

I am immensely baffled by her actions, and trying to understand her is a mind boggling affair. She is mean to the people who try to assist her in the projects (taking all their ideas and then kicking them out of the project claiming they are trying to steal her credit, and then working their ideas into her proposal and claiming it as her work!) and is treating her new hire badly. He had wanted to report for work in January this year to have a short break between jobs, but she had insisted he report for work at our company immediately as she wanted him around. And then she went ahead and took leave for December so that when he reported for work, she was not around! So he practically spent his 2 weeks in an empty office (everyone was on holiday leave) and trying to do what he could to get himself orientated by speaking to whomever else was around.

A global colleague whom I'm close to told me that our head office is very impressed with her because of the presentations she has sent over to them, and how she has "marketed" them. Apparently, she is expected to get a grade "1" review which is for outstanding performance. Something which is even more difficult to understand. There is even speculation that her counterpart in our head office may be leaving, and she is pushing hard for his job. It would be a promotion for her. Personally, I would be glad for her promotion. Not that I'm rooting for injustice, but at least I'll have peace of mind or as the saying goes, to have "plucked the thorn from out of my flesh..."