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Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

Lots of reasons for it, some are insecure supervisors, some are control freaks, some just like process.

I like process. I have a traffic person in my group and a custom online request system for the company to send in their needs.

IF you send an email or make a verbal request of a member of my team and do not cc/inform either myself or my traffic mgr then your request will not be fulfilled.

If one of my staff fulfill your request outside proper channels they get a talking to.

Several reasons for this.
1) Often the request is off hand and lacks pertinent information that delays the timely completion or causes the due date to be missed. Can't tell you how many times the requester simply says, "well I told so and so and it did not get done".

2) The request is last minute because the requester knew about the project but did not get around to submitting with enough time to get it done. They don't like the paper trail which reveals they dropped the ball.

3) Sometimes my team is not yet aware of information that is in flux that may change the nature of the project so by doing it too early it's wasted time/effort when the parameters change.

Had one last week.

One of my guys was on vacation. Someone else in the company who was working from home that week forwarded a request from my UK office for some assets required for the product to be certified for release in Australia.

Because it went directly to the guy on vacation and neither myself or traffic mgr were cc'd the request did not get addressed until a week later which will cause a 3 week delay in the US, Latin America, UK and Australia/New Zealand street date.

Missing the street date means all the in store marketing initiatives will be over and gone by the time the product arrives. We'll get hit with penalties from retailers if there is an ad in their circular, that's $50k a pop.

And retail will likely cut orders.

It's not insignificant.

How would I handle your situation?

Give your Supervisor a heads up that so and so made a direct request of you and that you will CC him/her when you send it thru.

And we wonder why the Chinese are eating our lunch in business and our government is going broke.