Need advice for a sticky situation

Subject: Need advice for a sticky situation
From: "Lurker writer" <lurker_writer -at- hotmail -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 15:43:44 -0500

Fellow Techwrlers:

I humbly seek your opinions, advice, and council on a situation I'm dealing with. Apologies for the length of the background information.

One of my internal clients is a design engineering manager who happens to have a lot of clout in the chip design center where I work. He's a most pleasant English chap, but he has the nasty habit of backstabbing, lying, and going around me to my manager with mostly bogus issues that could easily be solved locally (my manager is in Arizona; I'm in Texas).

He times his unsubstantiated whining when I happen to be out of the office, and his penchant for falsifying the facts, exaggerating, and creating issues where none really exist has put me ill at ease. When he complains to my manager, he never gives the entire story (and the stories he provides are more fiction than fact).

Now, we get along great socially. The first time he went around me to my manager about an issue, I later approached him in a non-confrontational manner and kindly asked him that he come to me first, rather than unnecessarily getting my manager involved. I explained to him that he could consider me a "dotted line" direct resource and it was my job to see that his documentation requirements were met. He got all flustered and looked away from me during this brief conversation and mumbled a barely audible "OK." From his reaction, I could tell he doesn't deal with direct confrontation (a respected and taught skill at my company) very well.

The lastest incident occurred when I was out on vacation last week. Prior to my leaving, I had informed him (in my weekly report) who would be responsible for my projects in my absence. I even told him in person 2 days before my vacation the very same thing. He went whining to my manager about "not knowing who was working on my projects" and other completely bogus issues.

I get this "bad dog, no biscuit" email from my manager, who based his response to me on the engineering manager's version of reality.

I spoke with my manager yesterday about the issues in question (I'm glad I saved every email transaction with this engineering character) and gave him the facts that I could substantiate with emails. My manager apologized for thinking otherwise, and said that we've got a delicate situation. If we piss him off, then the DE team can get their own technical writing resources rather than use us (internal), which means much less work for me and the people on my team, which leads to....you get the picture.

Well, OK...it's a delicate situation, so here's what I'm proposing to my manager as a partial remedy:

1. Increase the granularity for approvals for every decision. (This manager usually will say on Monday "Can we get the such-and-such spec out this week?" and I'll say, "Yes, no problem." And when the spec comes out in PDF on Thursday because of other project priorities, he bitches to my manager that "it took 4 days to generate the PDF" when in fact it took 2 hours to generate the PDF files.
2. Copy my manager on all emails regarding decisions/approvals. (I though of blind copying him instead, but I want this engineering manager to be aware that I'm aware of what's been going on by directly copying my manager).
3. I've got to change this DE manager's perception of me, even though I go out of my way with him and all my customers to stay on top of all projects.

He is one of 5 internal DE managers I work with and the remaining 4 managers give me and my team stellar ratings.

So, any ideas or suggestions (short of landing me in court or jail) about how to go about changing his perception or other tactics I can use to help remedy this situation?

Thanks so much in advance for your wisdom.

LW
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