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The problems with your approach are numerous, and the results can be
predicted fairly easily:
1) A potentially great technical communicator is driven out of the
profession, due to the failure of the project and the lack of resources and
mentoring.
2) The tech writing department reinforces its reputation for isolation and
non-cooperation.
3) The company goes down the tubes when the project fails, and everyone
loses their jobs.
4) The VP and the Product Manager walk away blaming those writer types for
the project's failure.
No matter how much empire building is going on, the department should work
to minimize the damage to the company, themselves and a colleague who has
been put in a completely untenable situation.
Geoff's and Dick's advice is much more productive and beneficial. The
department may eventually have formally separate themselves from this new
writer, but why burn more bridges than you have to?
MTC
Connie Giordano
-----Original Message-----
From: Douglas S. Bailey (AL) [mailto:dbailey -at- commandalkon -dot- com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 10:19 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: RE: Handling the anti-team situation
> As expected, the new writer is having to constantly come to
> us to learn
> what to do--what tools are needed, where archived information is, etc.
> We've been friendly and helpful and done our best (from a distance) to
> help her do her job.
*I* think the best thing here is to tell the newbie writer to stop coming to
his fellow tech writers and start addressing those questions and concerns to
the new manager. If he wants to isolate the writer in an effort to promote
team unity, then he needs to provide the writer with whatever the scribe
needs to get the job done. The more questions and concerns the writer can
express, the better. Sooner or later the manager will get the idea that his
notion of isolation is detrimental to his product, which will go out the
door with crappy (or non-existent) documentation if he continues to stand by
his exacting preferences.
At any rate the new writer has no business approaching the other writers for
anything. Better for the project to fail, thus proving the point that too
much teamwork isn't necessarily a good thing. ;-)
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