Office Politico

Last month, when I was in the middle of the web site migration from one content management system to another at work, Mr. G approached me with a request. In a conversation with another department head (who happened to be very far up the food chain in our company), Mr. G was asked to produce a report of our group’s experience with the web site migration. Since we were the first group to migrate a site, this higher-up felt it would be beneficial to have documentation of what the process was really like. His group has a much larger web site to move over so he was hoping to gain some advice on how to best help them in their endeavour.

It was after that conversation that Mr. G came to me and asked me to write something up based on the glitches we’d encountered, the time it took and all of that fun stuff. I promised him I’d write something as soon as the migration was done and the site was live on the new system.

True to my word, I wrote out a two page report based on the experience Natalie and I had. I explained what we had been promised by our IT folks (the famous 3-5 minute per page estimate), what was involved, what technical glitches we found and suggestions I thought would be beneficial to everyone else who would be involved in migrating a site over to the new system. I tried not to use too many technical terms as I knew the report’s audience were not technically inclined.

I finished writing the report and fired it off to Mr. G (with a copy to Larry – my boss) so that he could present it to the higher-up. Mr. G, who’s a numbers guy, asked me to put in some statistics and Larry added some wording to help explain some of the more technical things. With the report polished up, I thought that was the end of that. Mr. G would send it to the higher-up who had asked for it and that’d be it.

Wrong.

“I think, as a courtesy,” Mr. G began, “I will send this to the head of our IT department and the webmaster first.” Larry and I looked both at each other wondering why Mr. G was bothering going that route.

“Why would you want to send it to them?” Larry asked.

“I don’t want them to be blindsided by this,” he said. Blindsided by what? I thought. There was nothing accusatory or critical of our IT department in the report. We all agreed that it was a fair and honest description of what our experience was like. There had been glitches, but there are always glitches when new software is implemented.

“When I send it to IT, I’ll explain that I was asked to produce this by the higher-up,” Mr. G continued.

“You should probably make it clear that you’re going to send it to the higher-up regardless and that they’re just getting a copy,” Larry said. He knew that Mr. G was playing it safe, keeping the company’s politics in mind. Since the report did mention some downtime that we experienced, Mr. G worried that it could be interpreted as being negative. He wanted to be sure that everyone’s sensitivities were considered.

I walked out of that meeting pretty annoyed. I knew as soon as the head of IT got a hold of that report, he’d start whining and bitching about it. The man is an idiot; it’s obvious from speaking to him that he probably shouldn’t be in the job he’s in. Rumour has it that one of the VP’s tends to bring him (head of IT) with him to every company he goes to.

Mr. G e-mailed the IT guys and copied Larry and I. The e-mail was thick with political correctness and making sure no toes were stepped on. As I knew he would, Mr. G promised that he would not send the report to the higher-up until after the IT guys had a look at it. Within minutes, the head of IT wrote back, “Thanks for sending this Mr. G. We’ll have a look at it and send it back to you with our comments ASAP.”

Uhm, comments? At no point was there a suggestion – or invitation – for his comments. That report had my name on it, if he wanted to provide feedback, he could write his own report. That’s when I knew that the report that had taken me thirty minutes to write was going to become a very big issue – especially for Mr. G. I couldn’t really feel bad for him since he created the problem for himself. Had he wanted to be courteous, he could have copied the IT guys when he e-mailed the report to the higher-up. One e-mail, one report would have sufficed.

Larry agreed with me but there wasn’t really anything he could do. He spoke to Mr. G and suggested that he send my original report on to the higher-up without waiting to hear back from the IT guys. Mr. G didn’t feel comfortable with that; he didn’t want to piss off the IT guys or create any tension between departments.

A few days later, the head of IT wrote us back and included a copy of the report with his comments in tracked changes. I opened it immediately and began to read. I couldn’t help but laugh at the comments he and the webmaster had written. Even though there wasn’t anything accusatory in the report, he went through and “explained” everything that I had written. It was redundant and superfluous at best. At worst, it illustrated how big of an idiot he really is.

“Mr. G, I would appreciate it if you not distribute this report without my comments,” the IT head pleaded in his e-mail. The moment of truth was upon us: would Mr. G cave to political pressure and send the report with IT’s comments? Or send the original report as he had initially said he would?

Larry and I both felt like he should send the original report. I especially didn’t want the tracked changes version going around with my name and the idiot’s stupid comments all over it. If Mr. G was going to send it with IT’s “feedback”, I wanted my name removed.

About a week after IT sent it back to us, I learned that Mr. G had indeed given in to the company politics; he sent the report to the higher-up with IT’s comments included. While I was pissed, I wasn’t surprised. Mr. G is the ultimate diplomat, always weary of boundaries and political sensitivities.

I learned a lesson though; I’ll know in future to ask who the audience will be and decided then if it will be worth my time to do something like write a report. If I ever do write something like this, I’m converting it into a PDF before sending it to anyone.

I really hate knowing that the altered report went out with my name on it. Lesson learned, I guess.