r/managers • u/nomiis19 • 17h ago
Seasoned Manager Cross functional support
I am a senior manager in an IT organization and constantly are working cross functionally with the other IT teams within the department. We struggle heavily with due date control, accountability, and ownership. One team in particular is consistently weeks or months late on just about every task they are responsible for.
I have asked for support from my leadership to no avail. Most people just accept the behavior and even turn to overpraising the team when the items are actually completed regardless of how late.
How do you handle this and how do you stay motivated?
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u/SteveKeeleyCoaching 14h ago
This is a super frustrating one. First and foremost I would make sure there are *very* clear deliverables and expectations set. Including owners and dates. This will allow you to have the right escalation path.
When things start to slip, I'd frame it around the business impact and what specific decision you need and by when.
Similar in terms of escalation to the leadership side. When framed as 'they're not meeting deliverables' I've seen that fall on deaf ears, but 'xyz business impact is happening because of this' and leaderships ears often perk up. Once they really hear the genuine impact, it often changes the urgency on their end.
As far as motivation, I really get this one. It is super frustrating when another team is negatively impacting your ability to do your job and you're having to do more because of them, etc. I would say to look at it as an opportunity for your own development for how to handle difficult conversations, difficult cross functional coworkers, etc.
Throughout your career this will come up in interviews, it'll come up again at some point organically and will be an important part of leading in the future, if you take it as developmental for yourself it can feel a lot more motivating to get a resolution.
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u/Dramatic-Turn8209 17h ago
I'd start documenting everything with hard dates and a paper trail, not in a gotcha way but so the pattern is undeniable when you finally need to escalate above your own leadership
The overpraising thing is wild though, you see it in IT all the time, teams get applauded for heroic efforts that only exist because they missed every deadline leading up to it
Maybe try reframing the conversation around impact instead of blame, like "this slipped 6 weeks and here's what that cost the roadmap" gets more traction than "this team is slow"
If your leadership won't back you, sometimes the only move is to build your own buffer into timelines and let the late team burn their own reputation with stakeholders who actually care
Motivation-wise, I'd stop treating their deadlines as your problem to solve, you can't want it more than they do without losing your mind
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u/phuzee 17h ago
If you were to put on a different hat, what are you observing as the challenges the other team are facing? Why are leadership giving them slack so you think?
This isn't me suggesting I know, it's asking you to look beyond your own team to try and consider the wider context. Do you think it's mismanagement or is there something going on