So the OP should plan in advance to ask him to put the flyer on the desk, put it on his calendar, check that the flyer is on the desk and if not asks him again? And what then, must she put another calendar alert in, must she check again? If the paperwork is given out by the receptionists, who gives them the correct paperwork? The OP or the useless colleague? If it’s useless college, must the OP put a calendar alert in, check he’s done it..... and so on forevermore?
Sorry if I wasn't clear - I was not suggesting OP do the Plan Do Check Act for him!
What I was suggesting was that (if she wants to try rebuilding a relationship with her manager) she could come to him with the suggestion of putting some standardised processes in place?
So the employee is following Plan, Do, Check, Act because that process has been implemented by management (at the Op's suggestion because she is the one who has been seeing the mistakes).
The OP maybe doesn't have to put a specific action of "put this flyer in the room" in his calendar but since the employee thought he had already done it, this is obviously some sort of process, perhaps informal, that the employee is somewhat aware of.
So instead of it being in OPs head (she verbally asked him to put the flyer in the room just before the meeting)... why not just create a standard customer visit process that the employee follows every time there is a customer visit, that has checks in place if there are serious consequences for process failures?
If a customer visit happens once in a blue moon then it's totally overkill and pointless standardising the process. But then, it's just as pointless getting worked up about that particular mistake because repeats are going to be infrequent (and thus the impact reduced). And yes OP has every right to get personally worked up about it, but in terms of impact on the business? If it is important then standardise the process so the employee can take as much responsibility as possible and human error is less likely to occur.
If the flyer is a non-issue in a business sense then focus on what is important in a business sense and implement PDCA there.
This sounds like one hell of a lot of fussing for the simple process of putting a flyer on a desk!
Absolutely 😂 In my line of work the mantra is assuming every operator is a monkey who cannot use a single bit of initiative. If an operator makes an error it is the fault of the process and not the human. Everything that could have an negative impact on profits, customer satisfaction or safety has to be mistake proofed. Obviously that is an extreme situation, but some of the concepts can be useful in all areas of business, particularly asking - is this mistake actually important? And if yes - how do we stop it happening again?
And if no (which could well be the case for a flyer!) the manager is going to see op using initiative and taking steps to at least attempt positive change. Which I actually think is the OPs biggest issue, how her manager is viewing her!
I'm also coming at this as someone who has ADHD myself and struggles with "could you just...." verbal actions at the last minute, and who makes use of PDCA myself for my own work. But luckily I work in an industry where that kind of thing doesn't happen as much. We have processes for customer visits and standardised working practices.