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agonyaunt2022-04-12 12:34 pm
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2022-04-12 12:34 pm
Entry tags:
Ask a Manager: My Employee Is a Fucking Sealion
Ahem. The actual title:
my employee wastes a huge amount of everyone’s time with “helpful” suggestions and questioning
I manage four direct reports in addition to my own portfolio. For the most part this is manageable, but one of my employees, Adam, spends a lot of time pointing out inefficiencies and inconsistencies in processes or places where processes don’t exist.
Some of it is genuinely helpful feedback, but it generally requires the recipient of these suggestions (which are usually posed as questions) to spend about an hour crafting a response to show that the issue has been thought through already and explain exactly why things are the way they are. People spend this kind of time because of experience with Adam — he will badger and badger and point out any holes in an explanation. If he isn’t satisfied with an answer someone gives, he will often suggest
a bigger conversation is needed” and seek out higher-ups.
The issues are sometimes related to his work, but often they are about things he sees during the course of the day that don’t directly relate to his job. For example, when filling out an expense report, he believes he has a more efficient way of setting up the form, so he’ll write to Finance asking why it isn’t done the more efficient way and suggest that it is causing wider problems for people.
This is a significant drain on my time and energy, as well as the time and energy of people in other departments that he sends these questions to.
How can I make this stop? Every time I’ve spoken with him about more effective ways to give feedback or ask him to prioritize his questions, he falls back on “I’m just trying to help” or “I’m just asking a question.” I’ve tried to give him projects where he has more control, but that seems to only embolden him in trying to “fix” other things. I believe he genuinely thinks he’s helping, but I sense that a need to be right and be seen as the smartest plays a role too.
I wrote back and asked, “Have you told him directly he needs to stop? Or has it been softer messaging, like suggesting that he could approach things in a more effective way (as opposed to ‘you cannot do this anymore’)? Also, how’s his work in general?” The response:
It’s been mainly softer messaging, but at one various points over the past two years I have told him that he needs to focus on calibrating his responses to avoid using up other people’s time and to think more strategically about when to let things go because it is impacting how people see him.
Telling him outright to stop is tricky because he tends to play the victim a bit. When a different manager told him to stop sending emails to the company leadership, he went to HR to say that his bosses weren’t letting his voice be heard and he complained to me that it’s not fair to tell him to not to contact people in the company when he sees a problem that they should be aware of.
He also keeps saying it’s just his personality, and since we talk a lot about inclusion these days (in the context of DEI), he believes we’re being hypocritical if we tell him to tone down his personality (he is a white male) since that’s not being inclusive.
Another reason I’m reluctant to outright say “stop” is because he will then demand exact parameters and a process document that will lay out what he can or cannot do. I’ve told him to stop doing things on other projects and his response is to always ask me to ‘come up with a process’ to give him clarity. The reality is much fuzzier than that, and I’m not sure how to tell him to stop doing something if I can’t give him the exact definitions that he asks for. I haven’t yet figured out a succinct way of shutting this down, and while I try to avoid getting sucked into engaging with his questions and hypothetical scenarios, I find myself sometimes answering before I realize the path I’m going down.
As for work quality, the rigidity is definitely there in his work, but it also means that his work output is very high quality because of this kind of diligence and vigilance. The quality of the final project is usually good enough that, in our very forgiving culture, people give him a pass, but eventually I’ve seen people try to avoid working with him.
While the final product is great, it’s all of the other things that go into the work that eat up other people’s time — asking for a significant amount of direction at the outset of a project, noticing in the course of his research that there is an inconsistency somewhere in the archives and spending time tracking down how it happened — even when I’ve told him to ignore it and move on, etc.
I think you’ve got to seriously consider that Adam is not right for the job he’s in and you will need to fire him. I’m not saying you’re necessarily at that point now, but you should prepare to start going down that path.
He’s taking up enormous amounts of your time, other people’s time, and his own time on things he’s repeatedly been told aren’t priorities for him or the organization. He’s responded to your feedback by refusing to change and telling you it’s just his (utterly inflexible) personality. He’s badgering people when they answer his questions because he doesn’t find their answers satisfactory — even though he’s way outside his lane in asking. He’s escalating things that he doesn’t have the standing to escalate, and thus wasting the time of more people and higher up people. Colleagues are avoiding working with him because he makes interactions so difficult and draining. And his ability to exercise independent judgment and handle even a tiny bit of ambiguity are poor to the point of sounding disqualifying for the job.
It’s reasonable for you to say that you need someone in the role who won’t do these things. It’s reasonable to say that you need someone with the ability to prioritize correctly, exercise independent judgment, and make good decisions in circumstances that won’t always have clear, pre-set, pre-discussed parameters. Those are requirements of Adam’s job and it’s reasonable to insist on them.
If this were a minor personality issue and Adam were just annoying but relatively quick/easy to deal with, that would be one thing. But people are having to spend an hour at a time (!) crafting responses to his questions, because they’ve learned from experience with him that he’ll eat up even more of their time if he doesn’t.
It doesn’t matter that he believes he’s genuinely helping. He doesn’t get to be the final word on that assessment; that’s your call to make, and you’ve made it. He’s just refusing to listen.
It’s time to do two things:
1. Drop the softer messaging and get very, very direct. I understand why you’ve tried softening your language — you’re attempting to preemptively fend off what you know will be an exhausting response — but at this point you need to tell Adam in clear, unequivocal terms that he needs to stop what he’s doing or his job is on the line. That means using language like “you cannot do X” and “I need you to stop doing Y” and “I need to be clear that this is a condition of your job and not something we can negotiate or debate.” When he pushes back, you will need to say, “I understand that you see it differently. I am letting you know what I need from the person in your role, and what I need to see to keep you in it.”
You will need to hold a very firm line here. When he tries to test you with different scenarios, you should say, “This is an example of what I’m talking about. I need you to hear my feedback and use your judgment to figure out how to apply it across a range of scenarios. I will never be able to address every possible set of circumstances. I need the person in your role to work within broad guidelines like the ones I just gave you.”
Do not get sucked into thinking that you need to entertain every piece of pushback he throws your way! You do not, and you should not. Be ready to use language like:
“That’s not what we’re discussing right now. This conversation is for me to let you know what I need to see you do differently.”
“It’s not constructive for us to explore every what-if. I need you to hear the broad parameters I’m giving you and to function within them.”
“I hear you that you see it differently. Despite that, what I need from you is…”
“This is an example of what I’m talking about.”
“This is an example of what I’m talking about, and the fact that it’s continuing to happen in a meeting I called to ask you to stop doing it raises serious concerns for me about whether you’re able to do what we need from the person in this role.”
Frankly, you might also consider saying, “What I think I hear you saying is that you’re not comfortable working with the sort of parameters that are realistic in our jobs — that you want a process in place for every possible scenario. I’m not able to give you that; there will always be some amount of ambiguity where you need to use your judgment to figure things out. Knowing that’s the case, do you want to take a few days to think about whether this the right job for you?”
2. Talk to HR ahead of time about the problem and how you plan to handle it, as well as the procedure for letting Adam go if you don’t see the changes you need. You want to get them looped in ahead of time so that if he complains that you’re “not letting his voice be heard,” they already know the situation and will be prepared to hold the line … as well as hopefully explain to him that “inclusion” doesn’t mean “anyone gets to take up any amount of anyone’s else time with anything they want, whenever they want.”
Based on his past history, though, he is going to complain. If you think he might complain to your boss or other higher-ups, loop them in too so they know what’s going on and what you need if he approaches them. (If they’re decent at their jobs, they’ll be relieved you’re handling it.) Expect he’s going to complain, prep people for it, and keep moving forward.
It’s possible that being very, very clear with him (no softening, no sugarcoating) might lead to him turning things around. If nothing else, giving him the opportunity to hear the message very clearly is the right thing to do. But if he doesn’t change, I’d argue you need to part ways. Even though his final work product is good, the disruption he’s causing to you and others along the way is significant enough that you can’t let it continue unchecked.
my employee wastes a huge amount of everyone’s time with “helpful” suggestions and questioning
I manage four direct reports in addition to my own portfolio. For the most part this is manageable, but one of my employees, Adam, spends a lot of time pointing out inefficiencies and inconsistencies in processes or places where processes don’t exist.
Some of it is genuinely helpful feedback, but it generally requires the recipient of these suggestions (which are usually posed as questions) to spend about an hour crafting a response to show that the issue has been thought through already and explain exactly why things are the way they are. People spend this kind of time because of experience with Adam — he will badger and badger and point out any holes in an explanation. If he isn’t satisfied with an answer someone gives, he will often suggest
a bigger conversation is needed” and seek out higher-ups.
The issues are sometimes related to his work, but often they are about things he sees during the course of the day that don’t directly relate to his job. For example, when filling out an expense report, he believes he has a more efficient way of setting up the form, so he’ll write to Finance asking why it isn’t done the more efficient way and suggest that it is causing wider problems for people.
This is a significant drain on my time and energy, as well as the time and energy of people in other departments that he sends these questions to.
How can I make this stop? Every time I’ve spoken with him about more effective ways to give feedback or ask him to prioritize his questions, he falls back on “I’m just trying to help” or “I’m just asking a question.” I’ve tried to give him projects where he has more control, but that seems to only embolden him in trying to “fix” other things. I believe he genuinely thinks he’s helping, but I sense that a need to be right and be seen as the smartest plays a role too.
I wrote back and asked, “Have you told him directly he needs to stop? Or has it been softer messaging, like suggesting that he could approach things in a more effective way (as opposed to ‘you cannot do this anymore’)? Also, how’s his work in general?” The response:
It’s been mainly softer messaging, but at one various points over the past two years I have told him that he needs to focus on calibrating his responses to avoid using up other people’s time and to think more strategically about when to let things go because it is impacting how people see him.
Telling him outright to stop is tricky because he tends to play the victim a bit. When a different manager told him to stop sending emails to the company leadership, he went to HR to say that his bosses weren’t letting his voice be heard and he complained to me that it’s not fair to tell him to not to contact people in the company when he sees a problem that they should be aware of.
He also keeps saying it’s just his personality, and since we talk a lot about inclusion these days (in the context of DEI), he believes we’re being hypocritical if we tell him to tone down his personality (he is a white male) since that’s not being inclusive.
Another reason I’m reluctant to outright say “stop” is because he will then demand exact parameters and a process document that will lay out what he can or cannot do. I’ve told him to stop doing things on other projects and his response is to always ask me to ‘come up with a process’ to give him clarity. The reality is much fuzzier than that, and I’m not sure how to tell him to stop doing something if I can’t give him the exact definitions that he asks for. I haven’t yet figured out a succinct way of shutting this down, and while I try to avoid getting sucked into engaging with his questions and hypothetical scenarios, I find myself sometimes answering before I realize the path I’m going down.
As for work quality, the rigidity is definitely there in his work, but it also means that his work output is very high quality because of this kind of diligence and vigilance. The quality of the final project is usually good enough that, in our very forgiving culture, people give him a pass, but eventually I’ve seen people try to avoid working with him.
While the final product is great, it’s all of the other things that go into the work that eat up other people’s time — asking for a significant amount of direction at the outset of a project, noticing in the course of his research that there is an inconsistency somewhere in the archives and spending time tracking down how it happened — even when I’ve told him to ignore it and move on, etc.
I think you’ve got to seriously consider that Adam is not right for the job he’s in and you will need to fire him. I’m not saying you’re necessarily at that point now, but you should prepare to start going down that path.
He’s taking up enormous amounts of your time, other people’s time, and his own time on things he’s repeatedly been told aren’t priorities for him or the organization. He’s responded to your feedback by refusing to change and telling you it’s just his (utterly inflexible) personality. He’s badgering people when they answer his questions because he doesn’t find their answers satisfactory — even though he’s way outside his lane in asking. He’s escalating things that he doesn’t have the standing to escalate, and thus wasting the time of more people and higher up people. Colleagues are avoiding working with him because he makes interactions so difficult and draining. And his ability to exercise independent judgment and handle even a tiny bit of ambiguity are poor to the point of sounding disqualifying for the job.
It’s reasonable for you to say that you need someone in the role who won’t do these things. It’s reasonable to say that you need someone with the ability to prioritize correctly, exercise independent judgment, and make good decisions in circumstances that won’t always have clear, pre-set, pre-discussed parameters. Those are requirements of Adam’s job and it’s reasonable to insist on them.
If this were a minor personality issue and Adam were just annoying but relatively quick/easy to deal with, that would be one thing. But people are having to spend an hour at a time (!) crafting responses to his questions, because they’ve learned from experience with him that he’ll eat up even more of their time if he doesn’t.
It doesn’t matter that he believes he’s genuinely helping. He doesn’t get to be the final word on that assessment; that’s your call to make, and you’ve made it. He’s just refusing to listen.
It’s time to do two things:
1. Drop the softer messaging and get very, very direct. I understand why you’ve tried softening your language — you’re attempting to preemptively fend off what you know will be an exhausting response — but at this point you need to tell Adam in clear, unequivocal terms that he needs to stop what he’s doing or his job is on the line. That means using language like “you cannot do X” and “I need you to stop doing Y” and “I need to be clear that this is a condition of your job and not something we can negotiate or debate.” When he pushes back, you will need to say, “I understand that you see it differently. I am letting you know what I need from the person in your role, and what I need to see to keep you in it.”
You will need to hold a very firm line here. When he tries to test you with different scenarios, you should say, “This is an example of what I’m talking about. I need you to hear my feedback and use your judgment to figure out how to apply it across a range of scenarios. I will never be able to address every possible set of circumstances. I need the person in your role to work within broad guidelines like the ones I just gave you.”
Do not get sucked into thinking that you need to entertain every piece of pushback he throws your way! You do not, and you should not. Be ready to use language like:
“That’s not what we’re discussing right now. This conversation is for me to let you know what I need to see you do differently.”
“It’s not constructive for us to explore every what-if. I need you to hear the broad parameters I’m giving you and to function within them.”
“I hear you that you see it differently. Despite that, what I need from you is…”
“This is an example of what I’m talking about.”
“This is an example of what I’m talking about, and the fact that it’s continuing to happen in a meeting I called to ask you to stop doing it raises serious concerns for me about whether you’re able to do what we need from the person in this role.”
Frankly, you might also consider saying, “What I think I hear you saying is that you’re not comfortable working with the sort of parameters that are realistic in our jobs — that you want a process in place for every possible scenario. I’m not able to give you that; there will always be some amount of ambiguity where you need to use your judgment to figure things out. Knowing that’s the case, do you want to take a few days to think about whether this the right job for you?”
2. Talk to HR ahead of time about the problem and how you plan to handle it, as well as the procedure for letting Adam go if you don’t see the changes you need. You want to get them looped in ahead of time so that if he complains that you’re “not letting his voice be heard,” they already know the situation and will be prepared to hold the line … as well as hopefully explain to him that “inclusion” doesn’t mean “anyone gets to take up any amount of anyone’s else time with anything they want, whenever they want.”
Based on his past history, though, he is going to complain. If you think he might complain to your boss or other higher-ups, loop them in too so they know what’s going on and what you need if he approaches them. (If they’re decent at their jobs, they’ll be relieved you’re handling it.) Expect he’s going to complain, prep people for it, and keep moving forward.
It’s possible that being very, very clear with him (no softening, no sugarcoating) might lead to him turning things around. If nothing else, giving him the opportunity to hear the message very clearly is the right thing to do. But if he doesn’t change, I’d argue you need to part ways. Even though his final work product is good, the disruption he’s causing to you and others along the way is significant enough that you can’t let it continue unchecked.
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Alison removed the thread where people discussed how risible this detail is, which is a pity.
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That said, I can see how his behaviour is a challenge for his co-workers and that he is probably in the wrong job, not suited to his personality and needs.
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I dunno. One of the reasons Alison has a "no armchair diagnosis policy" is that people tend to say, "He's autistic" about anything annoying a man does, especially if he's White. And then that shuts down the conversation because then no one can push back against the behavior under question.
Also, optimization can sometimes be a tradeoff. For example, a 20K sorting machine would sort the daily filing faster than Sally does, but we don't have $20K to spare for a sorting machine, and we are not going to fire Sally and use her salary to buy a $20K sorting machine that can't greet visitors or maintain the supply closet like Sally does.
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The script she gives for the meeting reduces down to:
1. You need to be able to use your own judgement for things like this.
2. Your judgement is bad, and when you use your own judgement, you will get in trouble for it.
3. I will not help you get better at making correct judgement calls.
Like. Adam clearly is not doing well in the role and does need corrected and is not doing well at responding to criticism productively. But telling him "I need you to trust your judgement and also your judgement is bad and you should not trust it and the only way to fix this is to read my mind" is not how to do this.
If you're actually invested in helping him, my advice is to tell him that he need to bring any queries like this to you first, and you will help him determine what the next step is, so that he can get a better idea of what kind of judgements you want him to make.
Or start the process to fire him.
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1. You need to be able to use your own judgement for things like this.
Yes.
2. Your judgement is bad, and when you use your own judgement, you will get in trouble for it.
She's been telling him how to improve his judgement, though. That's the thing. He needs to *improve* his judgement.
3. I will not help you get better at making correct judgement calls.
I don't think this part is fair. She's been telling him how to by telling him what's important to his role and what isn't, and in response he goes over her head. She's been offering him help all along, and he needs to take it.
Also,,, the problem with "clear rules" is rules lawyering. I have dealt with so many people who said the equivalent of "you told me to wash and sort the beans but you didn't tell me not to put beans in my ears so it's your fault I put beans in my ears." It gets exhausting, is the thing. Especially when they're doing it deliberately, which I suspect Adam is because he thinks he's smarter/better at seeing "what's important" than anyone else.
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I agree with you about the going over her head part, definitely. But whether it's rules lawyering depends on context.
Example from the life of Baby Jadelennox, age approximately 27:
VP: You need to dress appropriately.
Me: Sure. What's the dress code?
VP: You're an adult, do what other people do who have jobs you aspire to.
Me: That's what I do! I dress like [male senior engineer who was allowed to dress like he'd just come off an atlantic city bender because male senior engineer].
VP: Argh, that's wrong.
Me: So give me a rule! [NB: I was in earnest, I really didn't understand this unspoken shit at the time]
VP: Don't wear a t-shirt with words on it.
Me, still in earnest: But you're wearing a t-shirt with words on it! So what am I getting wrong?
In retrospect the VP could have actually answered all my questions. Some of the answers should have been obvious to me (a t-shirt with a tech company's logo over the breast is different from a comic book t-shirt, for example). But since the demand for the dress code wasn't actually that he cared about the dress code, and was mostly angry that I was a young woman who thought I could dress and behave like the older men, he couldn't formulate those clear rules, either.
It doesn't sound like that's what's going on with Adam, and it does sound like he's rules lawyering. But I bet you that VP would have said the same thing about Baby Jadelennox, as well.
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S: You aren't communicating well and it's causing conflict with your coworkers, you need to work on that.
M: Oh no, I had no idea! What can I improve? Nobody has said anything! Can you give me examples of things coworkers have had issues with?
S: You shouldn't expect your coworkers to tell you if they have a problem! Just do better.
M: I'd really like to. What should I do?
S: Uh, well, you could try A, B, and C?
M: But I already do that? Here are examples you witnessed of me doing A, B and C all the time? What precisely is wrong?
S: Please stop arguing with me and just take the feedback.
(Turned out there was no complaints from coworkers and it was manager who needed communication advice, but that was a rough time for awhile.)
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I think I see some of that as a risk with LW if they keep getting bad advice, so I am worried for the sake of all their non-Adam reports.
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the dude in question was with the infamous MIT blackjack team, so I assume that when he was in casinos he was probably pretty sober. But he seriously dressed like a hungover tourist on vacation. Open Hawaiian-style shirts, panama hat, the whole thing, sandals. At work!
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yeah, the DEI thing was an entire red flag parade, I admit.
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Well, obviously you *do*, or we wouldn't be in this situation. (Yes, I said that. Didn't help.)
AFAICT, the thing he shouldn't have had to tell me was stuff like somehow psychically knowing that the pre-PIP project I'd been assigned - bridge feature A to feature B - was impossible because feature B had been cancelled, which had been discussed on an email chain that *everyone involved in choosing that project for the pre-PIP* had been on, but I hadn't, because it hadn't been assigned to me yet.
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aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.
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The advice is still bad though. If he does want to change, that will be an incredibly frustrating conversation that gives him no pathway to figure out how. If he doesn't want to change, it will just give him more reasons to justify why what's being asked of him is impossible.
If the manager has previously given him clear and useful advice on what he needs to do, and followed up on that, and nothing has changed, then no conversation is going to help and you need to move right to the working-on-firing.
But the reason Alison often moves to "you need to have this specific conversation" is that often the previous communication isn't as useful as the manager thinks it is. Particularly for someone who you know is very focused on process and particulars!
And from the letter, it sounds like actually he's been getting very mixed messages.
--The problem is that he's going over his head and getting involved in things that aren't his problem - but when LW tries to stop him, he goes over their head about that, and the higher-ups back him up. So it seems like actually, this is a work culture where that kind of cross-department and cross-level communication is encouraged and accepted.
--The problem is that he's asking for well-written and clear processes. But he's working in a job where being good with consistent, clear processes is actually very beneficial, so he probably also gets praised for that, probably by the same manager.
--The problem is that he's badgering people and interfering with their work, but it mentions that his suggestions are often helpful, so he's probably being sincerely thanked for his help a lot of the time, and people are politely engaging with his questions when he asks them, so he's not getting direct and immediate feedback to let him know when he oversteps and when he is in fact being helpful.
--The manager tells him he needs to work on calibrating his responses, and when he asks for metrics to calibrate to, the manager says it's fuzzy and they can't actually explain what the problem is.
--The manager tells him he needs to concentrate on his own projects, but when he focuses in and goes the extra mile doing research on his own project, that's also a problem
--The manager tells him he needs to work on improving, and when he asks for more guidance on how to do better, the manager tells him that's the problem.
That's all right there in the letter.
Like this guy seems SUPER frustrating to deal with and is handling criticism badly and I sympathize with LW, but I also don't think the manager has actually been able to clearly communicate to him what he actually needs to change and what better behavior would look like - they say outright in the letter that they don't know how to communicate what the lines he's crossing actually are - so I also sympathize if he's really frustrated in return.
If he's saying "this is my personality and I can't change it" that's one thing; but I've had managers think that's what an employee is saying when what they're actually trying to say is "We think in fundamentally different ways and expecting me to intuit your way isn't going to happen, so we need to try something else".
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Or, he talks a good game to his fellow White guys in the C-suite.
I do admit that part of my reaction to this situation is looking at how Adam behaves and thinking of all the different ways no one would ever let me act like that at work.
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But yeah I have once again fallen in the trap of wandering toward defending someone when I'm really just meaning to complain about the advice. Adam is terrible, but so is that script.
He probably *is* a white man who has never had to confront the idea that his voice is the most important in the room and believes nobody should ever tell him no. But that's still a bad script for that, because it won't do anything to solve that problem either.
maybe LW needs to suggest a Men's Interest Group that can help him work through some social truths everyone who wasn't a white boy learned in kindergarten.no subject
Bahahahahahaahaha!
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yeah I read this entire letter being afraid that I'm Adam, and AAM's response starting with "you might need to fire him" was discouraging AF. I've had a conversation which was exactly those three bullet points you enumerate with a VP, and it went poorly. And at my last job I was scolded for asking for feedback and scolded if I chose in a way that didn't match someone else's instinct.
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1) we were filing by topic. IIRC the division was Summer Paperwork (school registration, address, etc), Permission Slips, College Paperwork/Transcripts, and Misc. Someone from the College office didn't need to go through a pile of permission slips.
2) Each subfolder was then so small that exact date organization wasn't necessary. It's easier to fish through 20 sheets than 80.
I was there for the transition frrom one folder to four, and four definitely worked better, and anyway Mr. IT wasn't in charge of school paper records. But he still got me in trouble for it! Not that I remember it later or anything.
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ilu the mostest.
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I suppose I could have summarized this as "you're not terrible, you're not Adam". Because you are the opposite of terrible. :)
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I'm pretty sure the Adam in the question isn't struggling with a lot of unwritten rules or vague gestalt-based we-know-it-when-we-see-it boundaries. I'm pretty sure Adam just lives in a world where he's right all the time.
I do like your suggestion about bringing his queries to his manager first, though, because it clarifies the power relationship for him -- i.e. he may be right, he may be wrong, but he definitely does not have the right to bring other people's work to a screaming halt until they can present him with a book report that justifies how they're approaching work that's none of his business.
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(I wonder if they also have a culture that all work emails must be replied to immediately, and that's why this has become such a massive problem. I wouldn't be surprised.)
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I know my current place is inuring me to people who don't reply to their emails, but also, like, I've also worked in places where I cannot get people who work in my own office to reply to my emails.
I'm thinking maybe he's actually helping the other departments and fixing errors and fully improving their processes, because otherwise, why are they bothering to engage? It'd be like someone contacting me about a product I made and saying "you've got a major error here" vs someone saying "can you go out of scope and do a six month project just for me, without anyone approving it first".
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But it sounds like the actual problem with this guy is when he does that, and they reply "Thanks, we'll look at that", he takes that as an invite to reply with a novel-length screed explaining exactly what they need to do and how to keep it from happening again, and when he doesn't get the response he wants to that, he keeps emailing every two hours until he does.
Which is a different problem than "he sends suggestions to other departments."
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