Department head is messing up weekly, whats our options?

--chris--

MeanDrunkR2D2 wrote: »

You're in a hard spot. I don't see a good way to bring this up to him without him taking it the wrong way. Just do as he asks of you and just CYA in case he breaks something major and you can point to a paper trail that shows who did it if he tries to throw you under the bus. If he tries to throw someone else under it, so be it, it's not you. Keep learning, gaining knowledge and you could have a very good person that could help you out more in the future should he go elsewhere and he knows that you will fix anything and do it right.

Too many always think that if things get hard, or they have a boss who has a different approach that they should just leave. If you honestly like your job, and as a person you like your boss and the company why sabotage that? He just may have a different approach that has worked for him in the past. I work in finance as well, but luckily my department has a very strict CM process so we don't get dinged for PCI issues in that regard. Yes, things break, sometimes badly, but you need a damn good team that can follow direction and fix the issues. I've seen horrible infrastructure in place at some companies and the only way to really get the changes needed and to loosen the purse strings of those in control was to have things break that needed to be upgraded. His strategy could be very purposeful in the long term. You and your co-workers may just be seeing the short term issues while he's looking a year in the future and where he wants the department.

I have not brought his personality into this because honestly he's a creep (no details needed, just know I would not be a friend of his).

Its not that he does EVERYTHING wrong. He is a SME for a new core application we are migrating to in March, he knows that app inside and out plus he knows almost everyone at the app vendor. He will be a huge asset when that becomes our core application. He has a work ethic that borders on obsessive. He is here 60-70 hours week (usually making changes then finding ways to fix what he broke after hours). While I don't agree with his methods, our goals are ultimately the same...its just the way we are getting their is rough.

Our primary concern is that he will break something that will cause heads to roll, something major. We have a board of directors that are heavy on technology, when we have an outage that affects members we have to write up a synopses of what occurred and how to avoid it in the future. The COO takes that and presents it to them monthly.

aftereffector

I was about to write a long post with some advice that would really just duplicate what others have said here, but first... how invested are you in this particular job? The easiest way to resolve this conflict (in a sense) would be to remove yourself from it by getting a better job somewhere else.

I know this sounds like the old "lawyer up, delete Facebook, hit the gym" trope of relationship advice - not every squabble means divorce and not every workplace challenge means you need to polish up your resume - but it sounds like your working environment is not one that I personally would really enjoy being in and contributing to.

ivx502

Personally I would not recommend this course of action, but it can be possible the people above him are aware of his incompetence. Sometimes you have to give a person just enough rope to hang himself with.

I had a friend who dealt with a manager who for better words got in on the buddy system. At first he tried working with him, but it became clear he had an antagonistic leadership style. Second, he tried talking with the manager even going so far as asking him he can sit back and take credit for everything. Which of course was rejected outright. Lastly, he sat back and watched as machines were taken apart. Misconfigured configured networks began to fail, each time the manager would get my friend to clean the mess up. My friends response was to "dummy" up and claim to not know how to fix it. Eventually the manager was let go, and my friend spent the better part of 6 months cleaning things up.

--chris--

Well....about to have a "off the record" lunch with our compliance officer. This may be the best way to go about the issues we are having.

--chris--

Lunch was delayed a day, but worth the wait.

Our compliance officer has actually been in a similiar position before and offered a lot of good advice blended with knowledge of how the management works here.

The summary:

Document everything (which we do) and offer to do the work for him and directly ask that he clue us in on any upcoming work (which we do when we know of upcoming work, we usually do not though). She said that if it continues and things don't improve, we need to go to him direct with the documented changes and approach the conversation from the angle that we want to help him do this work and that we are worried other people in management may think IT as a whole (not anyone person) is failing to keep the network/systems running.

She said if things still don't improve then give it a few weeks/changes and go to the VP of HR. I don't know if this is the norm, but the head of HR here is in charge of overseeing all policy related issues and this is his domain.

The alternative is to document our changes per the policy and follow the policy then hope an audit catches unapproved changes (his changes), but she said its possible that could come back on us for not reporting the unapproved changes when they occurred.

Either way, she said now that we have a change management policy all approved and unapproved changes need to be documented. So the choices have been clarified, but neither choice is a good choice.

Russell77

I hope things work out for you. Just be careful that you are not leading the we on this quest. Being on the job for three months and going to the VP about your boss is risky at best. It's not a perfect world out there and you can only fix things that are under your control. Push come to shove it's more often you who will suffer than the superior. They are going to give him the benefit of the doubt just because replacing him is much harder than replacing you. Your co workers may talk a good game but which one has been around the longest? Do they have the spine to take the heat? They could leave you twisting in the wind as well. 3 months is way to short to play company politics. You really have to earn a rep and have a track record to be taken seriously. Best of luck and remember all work problems are temporary.

OctalDump

--chris-- wrote: »

Either way, she said now that we have a change management policy all approved and unapproved changes need to be documented. So the choices have been clarified, but neither choice is a good choice.

Yeah, there is necessarily conflict involved here and most organisations don't handle conflict well - "Don't rock the boat" as they say. But conflict is necessary for progress, so shouldn't be feared.

I'm glad to hear that there are some formal processes in place. It sucks that the softly, softly approach means that the situation continues. It's bad for the organisation as a whole, which means bad for the people working there.

I admire that you are maintaining a professional attitude in all this, trying to do best by your team and the organisation, and not just jumping ship. If more people could do this, fewer of us would have to suffer bad management. I know the reality is that it might not pay off for you here, and you might need to cut your losses and move on. But at least it will give you a good story to tell in future interviews when they ask "How have you dealt with a difficult situation in the past?"

Good luck!