Week 4 – Solving Problems/Improving Leadership

This week was probably the most stressful week of my internship. It was great that I was given work to do, but stressful because of how important the work was and how quickly we needed to get it done. The first thing I was asked to do was help work on an RFP response with the immensely important customer I mentioned last week in my blog post. The customer is known as Sainsbury’s and they are one of the leading grocery stores in the UK, therefore this deal could be huge for our company. I helped create and edit sections of the RFP response such as the Implementation and Rollout Plans as well as mapping out the costs of the project. Overall this was incredibly interesting and worthwhile and is a great addition to put on my resume.

Since every section of the RFP response had to have no mistakes it took our team a long time to finalize the document. We also ran into some issues along the way which was stressful. One of these issues had to do with us sending a final version to our marketing team back in the US which resulted in the head of marketing edited and completely messing up the format of the response. We believe this may have been due to her having an updated version of Word than us, but it was still frustrating for those who had worked hard on finalizing the document. However, we were luckily able to format it back to its original form. When this issue came up, it was clear that there seemed to be some tension and lack of communication between our UK and US offices. Due to this, I suggested that we needed to communicate better so that both offices are on the same page when dealing with projects like this. Otherwise more issues and tensions will arise. Despite all of this, my team including myself got the RFP response finished. My contribution to this response was massive and gained me a lot of respect from my coworkers. If we land this deal I will be able to say I was apart of a team that awarded our company a lot of money and growth. I really look forward to seeing if Sainsbury’s chooses our product for their supply chain. 

In addition to the RFP response, I was also given the task of software testing two headsets and a scanner that was returned to us by our customer Johnson & Johnson due to them showing faulty signs. The software testing sounds harder and cooler than it was, but it was still neat to be given the responsibility of this job. After contacting our customer and relaying our address to their head of supply chain and logistics, I received the headsets and scanner. My job was essentially to go through a list of tasks to check to see if the items were truly faulty. For example, with the headsets, I had to test whether the microphone was working by launching our voice recognition app and speaking into it. After testing both the microphone and scanner it was clear that all the items were truly faulty and in need of replacement and/or repair. The protocol for this is to send the items back to the US office, however, when I relayed this back to our customer they were not pleased stating that they could not wait weeks to have the headsets and scanner back to them and therefore asked for spares. We, however, did not have spares in our UK office and were now in a tough situation with me in the middle of it.

I was forced to quickly start an email with around six people asking them what furthers steps I should take with this problem. Our US office stated that they had to have the two headsets sent back to the US since they were made in the US, but could have the scanner repaired in the UK since it was made here. After hearing this I sent an email to my coworker who is in charge of repairs and replacements of faulty items asking him to find a distributor that I could send the scanner to. This is when another problem arose as my coworker replied with a distributor with a US address. I immediately became frustrated as he obviously didn’t read his email before stating that we needed a UK distributor. This is when the situation became even more awkward as I had to essentially indirectly state that he didn’t read the previous email in front of the rest of my coworkers who were helping me with this issue. It was awkward for me but needed to be done. After further emails and phone calls to UK distributors, the issue got pushed back to Monday. I hope this issue will be resolved by then and I will continue to lead situation until it is done.

Through both of these stressful situations, I learned just how valuable it is to step up as a leader and solve problems, even as an intern. Although I felt slightly uncomfortable and awkward at times as I was worried about potentially overstepping my boundaries as an intern, my coworkers in the office supported me stepping up as a leader since our UK office revolves around shared leadership. I also knew that not stepping up as a leader would make the situation worse. I mean I almost have a degree in Leadership Studies, so why not use it.