Tuesday, May 03, 2011

The Scarlet Letter Treatment

My bosses have a fantastic new way to motivate the team: public humiliation.

We have a 5-day close, meaning that we need to be ready to file financial statements five working days after the end of the month. Each of us has a task list with due dates. These tasks are all posted on our SharePoint site. Every day until we close, the list of incomplete tasks is mailed out to the entire team and anyone with an overdue task is called out publicly.

Our bonuses are dependent upon making our deadlines. We already have incentive to stay on track.

Fun fact! I had one task overdue on day 2. The task is described in the list as "Receive, review, and post cash journal entries from EMEA." I did not receive the journal entries by the end of the day yesterday, the due date. I received them at 4:16 this morning. They were reviewed and posted by 8:00, but they were still technically late, and somehow this is MY fault.

Let me rephrase this in case you missed anything pertinent. The Controller of Europe, the Middle East and Asia did not send me his six journal entries from his office in London. And I got bitched out for it.

"Golly gee, Jen, it's only day 2 and you're already behind? What can we do to help you get your job done on time?"

Um... what?

First of all, why is it not on their task list to send me the journal entries on time? Wouldn't that be the proactive way to put it?

Second, how is the behavior of the EMEA controller my responsibility? I have no authority over anything at all, so how am I supposed to tell someone 8 time zones away to get off his ass and send me his cash entries?

Third, and I think most importantly, I closed more than a dozen of my tasks early and the rest of them on time, but nobody sees that, they only see that I was late waiting for EMEA to send me work, which was done 20 minutes after I booted up my computer.

The only thing that this tactic will accomplish is that it will give more ammunition to people who want to have issues with other "team" members.

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