Open for discussion: if you don't involve managers in the decision-making process, the lines of communication will become crossed

Prosales, August, 2004 by Tad Troilo

"What do you suppose he's doing?" Al asked me, studying Eric, the new hire.

"Looks like he's standing around," I told him after taking a look.

"That's what it looks like to me, too," Al said.

Al shuffled his feet and adjusted his hat while keeping a close eye on Eric, who continued to stand around.

"Why do you suppose he's doing that?" he asked.

"Doing what?" I asked, not looking up from the papers I was working on.

"The standing around."

"I don't know," I told him, trying to get back to my work.

"I can't tolerate that."

"I wouldn't think you could," I said.

Al took his hat off and scratched his head.

Obviously there was a problem here. Al was the yard manager. He was a hardworking, straightforward guy who wasn't shy about letting you know when he didn't like the way you were loading a truck, driving the forklift, or sipping your coffee. And he certainly never hesitated to find something for you to do if you were stationary in his yard for too long. The problem here was that he wasn't saying anything to Eric, who had been hired the day before to work in the yard, but was still standing around. I was deeply perplexed.

The store manager cleared things up for me--sort of. It turns out Al was griping to the manager about a week ago that the salespeople weren't organized. Too many orders were coming out to the yard with words like "Hot Rush!" "Needs Yesterday!" and "Deliver in Five Minutes Please!" On top of that, the purchasing department wasn't anticipating demand on some important products.

Al wanted someone inside the store to help with the communication between the store, office, and yard. The manager relayed this information to the owner but suggested that we hire another yard man. In the manager's eyes, the real problem was not so much lack of communication, but lack of capacity. Our owner then digested this information, reached his own conclusion, and promptly hired Eric, who in fact was a lumber salesman.

When the manager asked the owner how this was going to help the yard's problems, the owner simply told the manager to let Eric work under Al.

Al didn't know what to do with him. And he figured since the owner hired him, he probably couldn't scream at him. The manager still had orders backing up, and we were still running out of key products.

It was like the game "telephone," where a sentence starts off perfectly clear, then gets passed from person to person and comes back to the beginning horribly distorted. Here, three different people in the organization looked at the situation, shared their thoughts with the next person in line, and at the end of the game, out popped Eric.

Eventually, management got their lines uncrossed and their opinions understood. They put Eric on the road to sell and assigned an inside salesperson to be a liaison between the office and the yard to help keep the schedule and the inventory organized.

Creating new positions, handling complicated problems, and hiring key people should be discussed with every manager involved--and at the same time. Otherwise, your company could get a lot of standing around, which we all know Al can't tolerate.

Tad Troilo is a manager for Cranmer's Kitchens by Design in Yardley, Pa. 215.493.8600 E-mail: TadNT@aol.com.