Dear Stephanie,
We hope your vacation was restful and fun. All of us on the team are excited to see you on Monday.
Since we got your message with our 2015 goals attached and we had a chance to meet to discuss the goals today, we wanted to send you this email message. That way, you can reflect on our thoughts and suggestions over the weekend.
In case we don't say it often enough, Stephanie, we think you're a great manager and we all enjoy working with you. We also understand what you're up against. You're a new manager, as well as the youngest manager in the company and the only female leader of a product development group. You also have a new boss, who presumably has a lot to prove.
You've done a great job over the past year of listening to us and collaborating with us on problem-solving and envisioning the future for our group. That's why we were surprised and disappointed to get your spreadsheet of 2015 goals as an email attachment to your cheery "How are things?" message yesterday.
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We've talked for hours over the past few months about what's possible in 2015, with our normal superhuman effort and with an extra burst of productivity that could allow us to get even more new products released in 2015. You know what we made happen in 2014 and the year before and the year before that.
You know that both the founding CEO Chuck and our new CEO, Martin, praise our group and your leadership at every opportunity. We're proud of our work and I know you are too.
We can't sign up for a plan that has zero chance of success, and that's why we wrote this message to you together, as a group. We all feel the same way. You already know how we feel about product releases in 2015, because we've talked about them at length. We understand that you were under pressure to sign up for the goals that are contained in the 2015 Product Releases spreadsheet, but we can't do the same thing. We can't say to you, to our VP Jackson or to Martin "Sure, we can do this." We can't. It would be foolish for any of us labor under the delusion that this schedule can be met by us or any group of developers.
We don't have the resources we need to get these products out the door in 2015, and we know your requests for more hands on deck have repeatedly been shot down.
We don't have the equipment that would make our work faster and more efficient. We know you've had trouble getting those dollars approved, also.
We're all adults, and lots of us in our group have been in the business world for a long time. We know that it's hard to tell the truth about sticky subjects like ship dates and budgets, but it only gets harder if you don't tell the truth at the first opportunity. That's why we're telling you now: the 2015 plan we received from you is impossible, delusional and fatally flawed.
We are happy to help you send this message to the executive team in whatever way you think best. We'll meet with Jackson or Martin or the entire leadership team if that would be helpful. We'll support you all the way in letting the company leaders know that their plan is off base and therefore dangerous.
The only thing we won't do is stay silent and allow you or any other managers to believe that we have a snowball's chance in Hell at delivering these products on these dates.
A new year is coming! Let's make 2015 the Year of Truth-Telling and get some tremendous products into our customers' hands -- not every product on the current plan, but most of them!
Let's start 2015 on the right note by talking about what's working and what's not. We are behind you all the way as you grow the muscles you'll need to tell the higher-ups what they so desperately need (but don't want) to hear.
Have a great weekend, Steph! See you on Monday -
All the best,
Your Employees
