How Things Get Done

As mentioned, our Supply Chain Director jumped on me over an email sent by our headquarters on a global audit project. My boss had appointed me the project coordinator for AP, and my job was to help ensure that the audit was being carried out for all countries in the region, and to compile country updates and send them to global.

Well, I had a meeting with the key 3 markets in AP (as they were the only one listed in the template sent over by global) and obtained all their updates, including their requests from global for assistance in issues arising out of the audit, and for more guidelines. I communicated that over to our HQ, and received the guidelines some time later.

For some reason, the person in charge of the global audit decided to send a summary update on the status of completion of the audit in each country. However, they only included countries in Latin and North America. And the information had been compiled by the Public Affairs Business Unit for our Business Unit in those countries.

I have no idea why she did not include in her summary other regions like Europe, Pan Asia and Asia Pacific. She obviously has her updates from AP already. However, unbenownst to her, the email she sent got my Supply Chain director jumping on me - in a nutshell, he was asking me if I had done my job. It wouldn't have been so bad if he had personally checked with me first. What he did was to write directly to my boss, copying me in the email. In it, he asked my boss why regions like Europe, Pan Asia and Asia Pacific weren't included in the update sent. It wasn't my boss' job to know that, and she would not have access to that information. Then in the next line, he directed his question to me with "I assume you are coordinating this?". He obviously knew that I was. I had been receiving emails from him if I had been doing my job on this every week since he knew that the Vice President of our company was visiting the region for a launch related to the audit. I wonder if he was aware of the fact that my boss had a personal health issue for which she had taken medical and personal leave until the 2nd week of February. She had requested that no email messages be sent to her unless absolutely on a must-know basis. I didn't feel this warranted a must-know for her part.

Funny how no one cared about the audit at all until when the President decides to visit us for a related issue. Funny also how otherwise calm, sane and reasonable human beings suddenly turn into nasty ogres out to make sure that they have got their backs covered. Of course, it could be that I am taking this the wrong way.