Sometimes, the Best Decision Isn’t the Right One, but It’s the Only One

Once, I was contacted at night by a colleague from the office. There was an issue with a specific integration that created merchandise transfers based on the allocations of products that had been planned. These allocations were responsible for mapping the needs of the stores and indicating which boxes of products should be delivered to each of them.

It so happened that, during the batch process responsible for creating the transfers, the support operator mistakenly deleted all existing allocations. As a result, there were thousands of boxes ready to be delivered but without any indication of where they should go. This happened in the early hours of Saturday morning, and the distribution centre was usually responsible for sending out the goods over the weekend so they would be ready by Monday.

I worked with the support team and covered these demands. I wasn’t the one on call, but I ended up being contacted due to the complexity of the problem. At that moment, there was no way the transfer creation process could function without the necessary allocations pointing out what needed to be done and where the goods should be sent. It was necessary, therefore, to make a decision to correct the flow and ensure the lorries could be loaded and the goods delivered.

Through the night, a colleague and I, who were working on the problem together, concluded that it would be possible to recreate the allocations based on the existing boxes of merchandise. The downside was that there was no way to know which store to send each set of boxes to, but it was possible to load the lorries with enough boxes to be delivered along the expected routes, even if the goods might not be delivered to the correct stores.

Logically, the ideal scenario would have been to recreate the allocations based on the original planning. This would require re-labelling and reorganising all the goods and boxes, causing even more delay and generating an additional workload for the distribution centre. Although that was the correct decision, it was impossible to execute over that weekend and could easily have caused a delay of more than 96 hours.

The integration flow needed to be corrected, the goods needed to be loaded, and the batch process needed to be completed; otherwise, the ERP itself wouldn’t be available properly the following day. After discussing it with my supervisor, I decided that the only viable solution was to recreate the allocations, ensuring the problem would be resolved in time. Although this solved the system issue, it would cause problems for the stores, which would receive unexpected goods. However, this issue could be addressed later, and the system would be operational again.

It was necessary to write a custom routine to recreate the allocations. There were tens of thousands of products, organised in hundreds of boxes, which needed to be delivered to more than 50 stores across Brazil. The algorithm wasn’t simple, but it worked, and after some time, the allocations were recreated, the integration ran as it should, and the transfer processes were successfully completed. So, the next day, with some delay, the lorries were loaded and set off. After almost a whole day dealing with the problem, we managed to correct the situation and informed the purchasing department about what had happened.

In the following days, the distribution centre received various complaints from stores that had received the wrong merchandise: stores targeting adults received children's products, stores catering to high-end customers received products for a budget audience, and stores in the Northeast received jeans intended for the South. Those were not easy days.

However, the problem was resolved. If it hadn’t been for that decision, nothing would have worked for at least 4 or 5 days, and the damage to the business would have been even greater. In the weeks that followed, I had to defend my decision and listen to complaints from some store managers. However, it was the only decision that could be made at that moment, even though it wasn’t the ideal one. At the time, I was responsible for identifying the problem, finding a solution, analysing the risks, implementing the solution, and, later, dealing with the consequences it brought to the business.

Often, we are exposed to situations that require direct intervention. Additionally, they need people who are willing to take responsibility for the results. That’s what I was doing at that moment. These weren’t easy situations, and I knew that I would have to explain my decisions later, but it was necessary. As the most experienced resource involved in the task, I was the person who had to take responsibility for the consequences of what we implemented to resolve the problem.

The main lesson learned from this episode was the importance of taking responsibility in critical situations and defending the decisions made, even when they are not ideal. It’s not easy, but in moments of crisis, it’s crucial that someone steps up and takes charge. In this case, that person was me.