Colleague keeps changing my work

[Stopitjuststopit2018]

And it’s doing my head in.

I work closely with a colleague who isn’t my line manager on paper but who I report to and work on projects with day to day, I’m like his 1-2-1 support manager. I have been doing this job for 10 years (although only working directly with him for 2yrs), and of the other 6 or so “support managers” in our division, I hold the most senior status out of all of them and often get rewarded/recognised for my work by the company on a national level - not bragging, I’m just trying to add some context to show that I’m not a newbie to the role.

Anyway for the projects we work on, we write tenders, sales pitches and have to do fancy presentations, which he will always delegate to me (it’s expected of our role) and which im more than capable of doing, yet no matter what I produce, he will always change things!! it’s always something small, and that’s what pisses me off.

Eg I could write “the boy sat at the table and ate sandwiches” and he’d change it to “at the table, the boy took a seat where he ate some sandwiches”. That kind of thing, nothing ever revolutionary

I’d say that 99.9% of the time his changes will make no difference to our clients who read it

Last week I made key words bold in a PowerPoint to make them standout. They were also blue. He changed all of them to italic and a slightly darker shade of blue. It made fuck all difference. One time I wrote the word “Euros” several times in a doc and he changed them all to EUR. But in a subsequent one where I wrote EUR instead, he changed it to pissing Euros!

I I find it so undermining and I’m starting to resent doing things for him, or i’m spending even longer formatting and re-writing things and trying to second guess how HE wants it to look/read rather than using my own creativity and having free reign. It’s denting my confidence really.

Apart from that he’s a really nice guy! How should I address with it him without making it awkward!

Agree with a PP which said send it as a PDF. If he wants to annotate it he can use comments - I bet it cuts the arsing about right down

I change things people do for me all the time. And they change my work, too. If it's something major, we'll have a chat, minor we just go ahead.

Just yesterday, my boss slightly changed a slide of mine somewhat. Reason: while my plan was absolutely sound (and actually superior to the final version in terms of operational feasibility), the optics weren't ideal politically in that he thought we needed to position ourselves stronger as a management component as well as an execution level one. He was right.

IME, these sorts of plans, decks, etc. are always team efforts. My subordinate's finance plan for operative project delivery might be spot on - but they might not think of the fact that clients like to see a partner face to face at times and that we should calculate to be able to afford this. That doesn't make their work rubbish. As her boss, I'd probably do worse on the details because I'm not as familiar with them. But I can and will contribute what I know better.

Long story short: I think that's completely normal and actually leads to better results.

My colleague keeps changing my work too. I write content marketing articles for specific audiences. I let the tweaks pass. But sometimes she rewrites the whole article and makes changes that don’t make sense. She takes out really important product benefit statements. I’m concerned about the effectiveness of these in the marketplace. I’ve raised it with her and my manager. It impacts the persuasiveness of our content and ultimately the success of my work. I have asked if we can work differently. She obviously doesn’t have a lot on and seems to want my job! I have explained my point of view and my marketing accreditation through various institutions and postgraduate studies, and she says that people generate business everyday without any training at all. I think it’s really overstepping the line when a colleague downgrades your skills. The industry recognises my expertise but my workplace just ignores it! I’m in a quandary about what to do now.

Maybe start your own thread rather than jumping on one that was started a couple of months ago.

It’s a power thing. There was a meme went round a few years ago about changing something small to assert your authority. Pity it didn’t also explain that it made you look like a twat!

Power trip. Assume you arent a huge corporate or there would be a set in stone corporate presentations template that you alter bold/italics/colours on at your peril. I'd mention it at my appraisal: but I'm a stroppy mare re that sort of needless fannying about.

We at my work call it 'red penning'
It's about their ego. Nobody can do it better than them. Even if they are wrong. It drives me crazy.
But they are also asserting their authority and what they say goes

Password protect it.

As he made the last change, his name is recorded as the last one to edit it.

He's claiming your work as his.