Anna knew that she needed to update the product publicity brochure. It had not been changed for two years and, although it was still accurate, it looked out of date and old-fashioned. It compared poorly with those of her competitors. She really needed to establish a website with the current information - the existing brochure did not even have an e-mail address on it. She was embarrassed every time she gave one to a potential customer. What is more, updating the brochure had been one of the priority tasks agreed with her manager at her quarterly review last month.

She began work on the brochure that following Monday and she thought it would take her most of the week to get it ready for the printer. At 11.30 that morning she received a call from David, the Sales Manager. He was due to give a presentation to a large potential client the next morning but he had just had a call from his wife saying that their daughter had been taken into hospital with a high fever. He expected to be available to make the presentation but he thought that Anna ought to know. Then, at 2 pm, her secretary Maria came in to say that she had been having lunch with a friend from Production who said there had been an equipment failure and one line was likely to be down for at least a week.

Anna made a cup of coffee and considered how she was going to cope. She decided it was not fair to ask David to go ahead with the presentation as she knew he would be worried about his daughter. She would do it herself and would need the afternoon to prepare for it. The production hold-up was worrying because she had some major orders that were already on tight deadlines. She would not be able to do anything about that today but would need to give it priority later in the week. The first thing she needed was to get information on the likely delays - Maria would collect that for her when she came back on Wednesday. As for the product brochure, well, that would just have to wait. Perhaps they could print a sticker with their e-mail address to put on their existing brochures.

She asked Maria to come into her office.