I read your article with some interest. I totally agree that badmouthing competition in this way only makes the person doing the complaining look bad but to my mind there are a few situations where this doesn’t hold.

e.g. when the person complaining is held in high esteem (or liked) by the person to whom the complaint is being made.

How would you propose to tackle the following without complaining.

Two senior level managers (A and B) are responsible for different departments. A is responsible for manufacturing and delivering a product to B, B is responsible for packaging the product.

However A is not competent and always delivers the product unfinished, which means B has to spend additional time correcting defects before packaging. The item cannot be sent back to A because A signs off the product as passing quality tests (dishonestly). Department B would lose more money if the product was sent back, because those charges would be made against department B as it is assumed the deterioration of the product occurred on department B premises.

This set up means department B is always seen to be underperfoming whilst department A overperforms. The other issue is that manager A curries favor with the boss, in other words the boss likes him.

How does manager B call out manager A, without sounding like an unlikeable complainer?

Your thoughts would be most appreciated.