This is always tough. Everyone drags their feet because it wonât work, then it doesnât like everyone expected, and then the manager has a new reason to blame everyone else for their poor decision
Comment on Daily discussion thread: đ© Friday, May 17, 2024
ajsadauskas@lemmy.ml âš5â© âšmonthsâ© ago
My work week is finally done.
And what a cluster fuck.
While the department that I work in is profitable, overall our organisation is set to lose money this year.
Bad decisions made by the âmanagerâ have been a contributing factor.
The âmanagerâ has gotten it in his head that if only our organisation can send an email to a partner organisationâs mailing list, sales will boom.
A couple of months back, he convinced the partner organisation to send a small segment of its list an email offering them one of our organisationâs products for free.
And to be fair, a reasonable number took up the free product.
This has convinced âmanagerâ that if the partner organisation sends an email to its entire mailing list offering them a discount for buying our orgâs products, thousands of them will take it up. Even though many (most?) of their customers have never heard of us before.
The âmanagerâsâ boss is new in her role (she moved into it after a restructure earlier this year), and trusts what he says.
Hereâs where it becomes a trainwreck.
The past two years, our org has run an end of financial year sale aimed at consumers. Both times, it has increased sales a bit, but nowhere near enough to meet targets.
Marketing have tried different promotions and shown they work better. They want to run a marketing campaign to business customers for the end of financial year, and use a different approach with consumers in the new financial year.
They did a whole preso to âmanagerâ showing that a different approach will generate more sales overall â but a lot of that revenue will fall in the new financial year.
Manager overruled them. His official reason is that he doesnât want to try anything different to last year, because thatâs risky.
(The real reason is he wants as many sales as possible this financial year, so that the losses from his bad decisions are as small as possible.)
So marketing are stuck with a campaign they know wonât work.
âManagerâsâ brilliant plan is to use that campaign strategy that hasnât worked, but then to get the partner organisation to email everyone on their mailing list, which he thinks will mean thousands of people will buy products and that will make it work.
(And yes, partner org mailing everyone on their mailing list is something out org hasnât done before. But this isnât seen as âriskyâ by âmanagerâ because itâs his idea.)
Of course, this pissed off the business salespeople.
So to keep them inside, heâs also making marketing run the business promotion as well, even though they donât have the staff or the budget to do both.
Heâs only just approved all of this now, and both promotions need to start on 1 June, so the graphic designers basically have two weeks to get everything ready.
It gets worse.
The partner organisation has already explicitly told us that e-mailing everyone on their contact list during June is a hard no.
But âmanagerâ has sold his boss on the idea, and sheâs said that she expects partner org to email everyone on their contact list.
Following a string of meetings, my boss is now stuck with making that happen. Even though itâs a hard no from the partner org.
So I was stuck in a string of meetings today where my boss was desperately trying to find a reason to tell her contact at the partner org why they should change their policy other than âManagerâ thinks itâs a good idea (there isnât one). Or some fact or piece of information will persuade âmanagerâ to see reason (Iâm honestly not hopeful).
What a total cluster fuck.
tombruzzo@aussie.zone âš5â© âšmonthsâ© ago
StudChud@aussie.zone âš5â© âšmonthsâ© ago
âmanagerâ is an absolute moron, and itâs insane that his bosses donât see it. What the actual fucking fuck. These people arenât earning their wages in the slightest đ