Submitted by ekreitz on
in
Forums
All,
I work in a hierarchical organization as an operations officer for my boss. We've got three subordinate organizations each with their own operations staff. My boss is the supervisor over the three subordinate organizational leads. The problem lies in the staff to staff coordination. I have no control or authority over the subordinate organization operations staff, but I need information from them they my boss requires.
The subordinate staffs often miss the informal deadlines we set for reports and information making my staff scramble at the last minute to put information together to give to my boss. I can't give them formal tasks as they they work for those subordinate organization leads. I have to set up some kind of informal system, but don't know how to go about it. Any suggestions?
Let the heirarchy work for you
Tell their boss (your boss) that your staff is not able to do their jobs because of the late reporting, and that you require XX hours/days to prepare the report. If you don't receive their inputs by that time, the report may not be ready on time. Ask him to announce that the informal deadlines are now formal. When you don't get the information on time after that, you can send his email/notification again, and let the subordinate staffs know they are not fulfilling their assignments in a timely manner.
If your boss won't make the changes, then you're just going to have to continue to scramble.