One triangle like situation I am very familiar with and have
had quite a few experiences with is one quite literally involving principals,
or as they are more commonly known, partners at the firm I interned with. I was fortunate enough to be able to intern
during busy season, January 15th or so, through April 15th. I say fortunate, because I was able to
experience what life would actually be like during the most stressful time of
year, as opposed to many interns who get to experience the relatively cushy
summer environment at an accounting firm and then are in for quite the surprise
when winter rolls around. That is
another story however. I mentioned busy
season purely due to the fact that from intern to principal/partner, everyone’s
workload is very high. Since interns and
staff are relied upon to put in the groundwork, including updating work papers
and collecting/requesting/organizing information provided by the client, there
are often many different people who are higher on the ladder, demanding that
their work be done first. This actually
presents quite the challenge at first.
Imagine you are an intern, you have been at work for one or two weeks,
and a partner of the firm you are interning for stops by your desk and tells
you he has a project he needs completed by the end of the day, or perhaps the
week if you’re lucky. First of all,
simply the fact that this person is literally at the opposite end of the
hierarchy from you is enough to make it a nerve wracking situation. This is further compounded by the fact that
at any given time, you also have projects from several senior managers, even
more managers, as well as some seniors. Of
course there are several of these projects which have been deemed high priority
with a “firm” deadline of no later than x amount of days.
This all presents a rather difficult choice for a
poor lowly intern. Do I take the project
just given to me by a partner and ignore existing projects that have the same
deadline, or do I tell said partner I cannot complete their project by the
required deadline and they should find another intern? Doing the first will probably piss off
several other people who are also very senior (and have the ability to make my
life miserable), while doing the latter will also be very uncomfortable.
Thankfully, I chose wisely when choosing where to intern, and
the firm I worked for had a fantastic support system in place with these issues
specifically in mind. After quietly
freaking out for a day or two as the work started rolling in, I decided to ask
my senior “buddy” what to do. He kindly
explained that this was perfectly normal and not to worry, the work could be
re-assigned with no issue. As an intern,
I also had a designated advisor who was a senior manager, one step below
partner. My advisor got me out of some
difficult situations with less than reasonable partners quite a few times by
talking to them on my behalf, and sometimes helping me work through their
projects by pointing me in the right direction or explaining a complex
issue.
In response to the question of whether there is a way to
resolve the tension, I believe in my particular case, what I explained above is
the right way to resolve the tension. In
addition to helping me when I was new, by the end of three months I had become
fairly adept at resolving the scheduling conflicts on my own, with a few
exceptions. I am fairly sure this was
intended, and was a way of helping the interns grow professionally. The short version of my long answer would be yes,
with a sufficient conflict resolution program/support system, many tensions can
be resolved without any fallout.
In contrast, I can definitely see how an agent could satisfy
one principal and fail by neglecting the other.
As I have said, without the higher level support I had access to, I
would have been in some very difficult situations which I doubt would have been
resolved smoothly. I most likely would have ended up trying to prioritize
everything, which is obviously impossible and would not have ended well.
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