I'm managing an upgrade project and I asked my assistant to do some preliminary research and come to me with some ideas on how to approach the project.
This particular project affects a large number of people and has one significant stakeholder pushing for change.
My assistant went ahead and interviewed this stakeholder and got a good idea on how to approach the problem, but doesn't know company policy (he's still new), and he came up with good ideas, but suggestions that will simply not work for this project.
Here in lies the problem. My assistant (while I was away on holidays) went ahead and submitted his ideas as a formal proposalformal proposal to the stakeholder. This person loves the ideas, but doesn't grasp the ramifications of them since this is a technical plan and he's not a technical person.
How can I go ahead and correct and direct my assistant (not punish), and set things back on the right track to success? I'm fairly new to project management and employee management myself, so any advice will be hugely appreciated.
note: my initial reaction was to be quite pissed off. I have, therefore, held back from saying anything until I can wrap my head around this process.