Question

You used to be the star manager for Brownies International. But a new manager, Maggie, in the marketing department has been accomplishing everything expected of her and excelling all of her goals. Meanwhile your manager Jacob has been sabotaging you. For example, Jacob moved $60,000 from your budget to Maggie's department. Your team couldn't complete everything within budget even after they had renegotiated prices and worked a ton of overtime. And Jacob has been meticulously chipping away at your staff and budget ever since. Although you've been able to meet most of your goals with less staff and budget, Jacob has continued to slice away resources from your group. Just last week he eliminated two positions in your team of six to make room for a marketer and some extra software for Maggie. Jacob is clearly taking away your resources while giving Maggie whatever she wants and more. You think it's time to do something or soon you won't have any team or resources left.

• How you will approach the conversation
• What your objective for the conversation is
• What your key points will be
• What you believe the benefit to the manager making the changes will be

Answer 1

1. In this case, first I will arrange a meeting with all my team members and I inform about the reality. Of course, all the team members know what is happening in the team, how the manager (Jacob) proceeding with our team and consequences and issues with it. I will ask any suggestions from my team members. Once the discussion is over, with the outcome, I approach Jacob, and inform that if situations are continuing in the same way, we can not accomplish the organization goals.

2. My objective in the coversation is to keep my people in my team and allocate resources as per requirement. I will give example of prior results of my team, what were the tasks and targets, how we were achieved the set targets etc. Hence, it my not good to take reverse all the resources and build pressure to accomplish the targets.

3. The key points are, about resources allocation, considering the previous work accomplishments, results etc.

4. May be he thought that with the only team he is going to be achieve all the organization goals. Being a manager, he has to treat all the teams in a similar manner.

If he thinks that any of the team is not doing good, he have a right to speak with the team, ask the reasons for poor performance, to fulfill any further requirements or inputs, etc, and then if it is running in the same manner, he can cut the resources or he can take actions.

But straightly, if he practices like this, it is not good and fair to the organization also. Teams may establishes based on various requirements, and the people may have different experiences, knowledge levels, targets etc, and we can not expect same result from all the teams.