Pass Me the Bucket!

Imagine you're in a bucket brigade putting out a house fire.  There's only one bucket, so it takes a while until it gets to you so you can dump water on the fire.  The home owner is watching nearby and is understandably anxious.  They start to yell at you to work faster and save their home, which might be understandable, but they're only yelling at you, not anyone else in the line.  You try to explain that you can't actually throw the water on the fire until you have said water.  They don't seem to understand and say that you're letting their house burn down, why won't you save it?  Again, you explain that once the water comes to you, you'll throw it on the fire.  Finally, they seem to understand just as you're handed the bucket.

As I've explained before, I often have to copyedit documents that explain changes to products or packing.  Sometimes these documents detail errors in manufacturing and need to be sent out as soon as possible.  One recent change to the processing of these documents (that came out of the experience I linked to) is that before I can do any editing, the documents need to be proofread by someone for technical content.  I'm all for that, since it should prevent errors like before.  However, not everyone seemed to understand the new process.  I got calls from two separate product managers asking me to copyedit their documents right away, without waiting for the email of approval from the technical proofreader.  They both understood why we had that particular process in place, but they both followed up with "Once it's approved, we need you to edit it right away," or something similar.

I'm happy that my reputation is continuing to spread throughout the company (one of the managers said that my edits vastly improve the documents he sends me), but it's frustrating that the new step in the process has not been properly communicated.