Departmental Dysfunction

Today has been quite a test of my patience. Recently I got a promotion minus the raise. One day my boss comes to me and tells me that they have decided that I would be the designer for the entire organizations, for uniformity purposes. Prior to this my responsibilities and obligations were only to the magazine division of the organization which was enough work to handle for one person. But now that I am the designer for the entire company that means I've inherited all the other departments along with their dysfunction.

Our company is made up of about 7 or 8 departments, none of which communicates with the other. And when they do its usually very awkward. Before I decided to take on this new feat I had to lay down some ground rules.

1. No one can bring anything directly to me. Everything must pass through my bosses hands so that she can divvy the work according to schedule.
2. My boss is the main point of contact. The only contact I have with other departments is strictly for clarification purposes only. I reluctantly agreed to be the main contact for printers.
3. All my work must be on a schedule as I can only work on one project at a time.

With that being said, there is always someone that wants to sidebar the ground rules. Of all the departments I hate to work with, the Communications department has got to be at the absolute bottom of my favorites list. You'd think that the Communications department would know how to communicate, not only with the rest of the other departments, but also amongst themselves. Not the case. That department has got to be filled with the most dysfunctional people alive.

Sean from Communications goes into my bosses office and says that they have a trifold that they want redesigned. The redesign was supposed to basically be a mirror of last years with the majority of the changes being text related. Okay, cool. I can handle that in a short amount of time and it shouldn't intefer with the rest of my projects. Right? Wrong. This brochure which I finished in 2 days has now been drawn out an entire month.

Once a project is designed it is sent back to the department head for a round of checks and revisions. Every time they tell me that the changes are final and I burn a disk for the printers, they come back with silly mistakes that they caught in their writing. Furthermore, they've completely disregarded ground rules one and two (see ground rules one and two above). But get this, each time, they state how URGENT it is to get the changes done as they need to get it to the printer ASAP. Four weeks later and we are still trying to get this to the printer ASAP. WTF? I don't work on request. If someone brings me something it falls to the back of the line. I cannot give one project priority over others unless deadlines permit that to happen. For this particular project, no specified deadline was given to me so therefore it is not a priority. PERIOD!

So Sean comes in this morning and says that the President of the organization wants this trifold to go up online ASAP. That I can handle. Its just a matter of making a PDF and sending it to the IT department. No sweat. Well shortly after I get an additional cc'd email from the department head stating that their are errors and the copy needs to come off the web and be replaced with a corrected copy. That's when I blew my top. Why is it that the department head hasn't been involved in the revisions? Because he's a bonehead, that's why. I kindly sent an email to everyone that has been involved in the process that simply states the following:

This is the latest version that was given to me as of yesterday. All the corrections that Sean asked for are in the document.

For sake of time, please review the document in full and return all changes once the document has been thoroughly reviewed so that I can continue on with my other projects. Once the changes are submitted to me in full I will make the corrections and send Ted the final document.

Please note that this is the final version that was approved and burned to a disk for print. You may need to track down the disk before it goes to print if you want the changes applied to the print copy.

You could hear the silence from down the hall. Wow! I didn't know an email could speak so loudly. Shortly after the IT guy sent me an email replying only to me, "I know that's right!" I emailed him back and asked him if it was too forward to which he quickly replied, "YES!" Well it got them to thinking because about 20 minutes later I had corrections on my desk. I had to ask the main question, "Have you ALL decided that these are the final changes?" Taylor confides in me that her departments problems are a result of it being run by men who have no concern for detail. Typical. I quickly dismissed her corrections and explained to her that I needed them all at once or else we would be doing this for another month.

The day went on rather awkward. Do I care? Humbly, no. I got my point across and from this day forward we have an understanding about how the process works.