Westfield Stratford shopping centre was displaying huge banners welcoming visitors from all over the world for the Olympics. The Council for Arab-British Understanding (Caabu) said the words were back to front and not joined up as they must be in Arabic.
The rail firm First Capital Connect made the same mistake when it sent posters to 13 stations printed in English and seven other languages intended to warn people not to leave items unattended.
Delegating to machine translation...
Luckily the computer-produced Arabic message was incomprehensible rather than rude but it does illustrate the problem of having to retain responsibility for the downside when delegation goes wrong, especially when the delegator is busy with the next fire…
NAM: Responsibility without Authority
Despite the progress in terms of tools and process, the NAM role still works best by taking full responsibility with very little designated authority...
While others await the completion of the definitive organisation chart and job description that acknowledge the status of Account Management, pro-active NAMs know that the job thrives on loose definition, with all necessary authority coming from a clear Account Strategy, agreed by CEO, and truck driver...
How it works in practice
This ‘job-box without walls’ allows the NAM to move persuasively at all levels, co-ordinating all key functions in both their own organisation and that of the customer.
Having to act without designated authority, the NAM is forced to use persuasion, in turn based on understanding, identifying and satisfying the job needs of each job-holder, and representing all desired output in terms of that colleague’s role optimisation, with unselfish allocation of genuine praise and credit.
This can be very frustrating for some NAMs given that ‘we are all working for the same xx company’, with the loosely defined NAM taking full overall responsibility for all to do with the customer, while colleagues apparently work within the comfort of their own clearly defined 9-5 boxes, especially in these unprecedented times....
Need a way out?
If this all becomes all too much, the frustrated NAM should try to squeeze in evening classes in Production, Finance or Marketing and transfer into one of these ‘safer’ jobs...
Meanwhile, pro-active NAMs who persist 24/7 in the ‘responsibility without authority’ route often find a soul-mate, not within their own company but rather in the role of the buyer, who in practice works in a mirror-image of the NAM role…
So perhaps some evening classes in buying might help?
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