Quote:
Originally Posted by Rick Lee
I need some detached advice on something I'm too mad about at the moment to write cleary on to my boss. But I need to write him soon.
Last Monday, as I walked out of my Santa Monica hotel and was looking at the smoke in Malibu, my Blackberry buzzed with an email from our CFO announcing that our company was comp'ing (as in totally free of charge) every press release to our most expensive domestic distribution circuit that had to do with the CA fires. This deal ended Friday. Obviously, this cost some money, but was intended to be a PR effort to bolster our image and build some goodwill. I think it worked too. But since I am paid base plus commission, this has taken some money out of my October revenue and thus November commission check. This wouldn't matter too much in January, but as the end of the year fast approaches, we can get huge bonuses for meeting our 2007 goal early. It's basically the CFO telling sales folks we're donating part of our commissions to the groups that wanted to put out statements or info on the fires. He didn't ask us, he told us.
I haven't computed the actual dollar figure yet, but I'm guesstimating at least $3k in freebies for my own clients and that's only the stuff I have access to. The company set up a special email address for this "sale", so I can't see what all went there. Our commission structure is so complex, that it's almost impossible to figure out what cut of that amount would be my commission. Since my division deals solely with public interest news, we have been hit a lot harder by this than the rest of the company, which deals with business and financial news. And crisis communications is our business. We thrive on it. Why give it away?
My boss is nowadays way more of a management guy now than he used to be and actually told me, "If you had been here last week (I was on my honeymoon), you could have capitalized on this by reaching out to prospects who had previously not returned your calls." I'm not making this up. In the end he said he could see where I was coming from, but I know he's trying to spin this into a big picture thing that is somehow supposed to benefit me and, at the same time, gingerly warning me to not make a big deal of it. I can take the hint. But he has asked me to write him an email, explaining why I think we should not be docked this comp'ed revenue and how much I would be "due". He says he'll pass this on to our CFO.
What would you write? |
He is inviting you to walk the plank.
No doubt the CFO had to get 'buy-in' for this little idea and that had to involve his peers and probably his boss. That means a lot of people have invested this
PR move and your email would no doubt make the rounds of a number their inbox's once your boss forwarded it.
So either A) he is just ignorant of politics and really expects the CFO to be responsive B) wants to throw you under the bus and at the same moment ingraciate himself to the CFO and the group who elected to do this or C) some other reason
I think a good boss doesn't let his subordinates make bad decisions. Rather, he attempts to keep them from making bad decisions while not micro-managing them.
In your case you need to decide how important it is to you to 'be right' vrs how important your career in this company is to you.
Good luck