Unfair Criticism

The line managers were supposed to turn in their budget phasing (breakdown into 12 months) by yesterday. As usual, there was massive delay.

The department I supported was, without fail, the latest. Not only was the numbers not complete, it was also unreconciled when they were turned in. Unfortunately, at this time, the business analyst was on leave and I had to double up as his covering officer to help him coordinate the various divisions' submissions. I was neither his official covering officer nor was I a member of his team, yet to ensure that the job got done, I had no choice but to chip in.

Having worked for a number of years, I should have shed my naivete years ago. How often had I been demoralised when a helping hand was returned with ingratitude. Despite the many unpleasant experiences, I still harboured the hope that we should always work as a team and kindness beget kindness. Yet, I never expected such blatant ingratitude that nearly turned my heart to stone. It also taught me to be more wary of this person.

Being a finance support for this department, I had helped prepared templates to help reconcile the transfer of budget between divisions from their latest reorganisation exercise. After they ensured that there was 'proper handshake' of all transferred amounts, the amount pre and post transferred should be the same. With this, they could proceed to split the post reorg budget into 12 months.

Everything was in a mess when they were turned in. The numbers did not tie. The reconciliation was not done. Before the numbers were finalised, we kept receiving emails to download their numbers to SAP. However, as no proper checking was done before they were sent to Finance, Finance often received an email to ask us to hold the download shortly after we received their emails to load the numbers. It came to a point that I also started to lose track which version to load into SAP. Blind loading of many versions could easily lead to duplicates and greater difficulty in unravelling the differences subsequently.

Hence, I tried to put a stop to all these by sending an email to all the coordinator within this department to tell them to stop providing files for downloading into SAP until they completed their reconciliation exercise. To justify this halt in loading, I narrated the past few days' experiences and highlighted the potential risk of creating a bigger mess in the system. All these were sincerely highlighted to resolve the issue and never meant for finger-pointing.

I never expected the response I got from the business analyst whom I was trying to help while he was on annual leave.

"... Stop making snide remarks. If someone thought she could do a better job, please just come and do this. This is not as easy as it seems... ... This is not the time to point fingers."

This was extracted from the email he replied to me and he has copied all his coordinators in the same email. It was not verbal. It was not just between the two of us. Unlike others, I never cared if this was meant to undermine my authority among his people. I would have accepted his criticisms if I was just trying to push the blame. When faced with such unfair criticisms, I was simply too baffled and too upset.

Fortunately, I did not act impulsively or it might have started a verbal war on email. After I had cooled substantially to know that I could act rationally, I drafted an email to response to his unfair claims. Firstly, I apologised if my email appeared to finger-point and explained that it was not never my intention. I continued to state that the proposals were made to minimise some of the downstream problems that I could foresee.

Despite writing the email, I was still seething with anger at the end of the day. Suddenly, I felt very drained and demoralised. I needed the energy of the weekend to recuperate from this unpleasant debacle.

Maybe next time, I should be less kind and keep my hands out of other people's business. I should just escalate as soon as deadlines are not met - a stance an excolleague has constantly employed. Yet, I often tried to do this as I always was guided by the principle that I was there to solve problems for my boss and not to create more problems. Moreover, to promote a more cordial and cooperative relationship, I should not complain unless it was a last resort.

Maybe I was too idealistic or simply too stupid.