Is AUTHOR wrong in the post ? POST : \[throwaway account to protect my identity\]

At my work, I manage three teams. Due to various M&amp;A activity we are well under-resourced and I'm running at about 60% of the staff I need - but we are recruiting to fix this. The administration is aware of the situation.

I work very closely with our IT department - but they are also under-resourced and so are very behind on completing work for me. This is where it gets tricky.

It turns out the IT manager has been spending his time scoping out one of my teams (which is a marketing function), and he's gone into the administration and pitched that *he* should run that team – as long as he gets more staff. From his point of view, there is an opportunity, and he wants more budget, so he's made a pitch to takeover.

Now since we are short staffed across the board anyway, the administration is tentatively willing to let him go ahead with it to keep the wolves from the doors.

He made this approach to the administration when I was on leave - so I wasn't in the meeting with an opportunity to raise my point of view.

A lot of the new proposals that he has claimed he will accomplish are things I've already specified to him as required, but he hasn't had time to do it. In hierarchical terms we are both at the same level and both report to the CEO.

I could kick off. I could make it completely obvious that some of these are my initiatives, and that it's me who is responsible for the KPIs - and that I’d have concerns about handing an important team to a department who is already struggling to do their day job.

I could point out that some of his other proposed initiatives for this unit have underlying flaws - showing some knowledge blind spots of the subject matter.

This would damage his reputation at work. It would probably damage mine as well. Finally, we'd be worse off as a company because the work probably *still* wouldn't be getting done.

But I would have "put right a wrong" of him trying to poach my team while I was on leave and retain that control. I have the experience and the knowledge, so I've got a very good chance of winning that battle. 

There's a 50/50 chance he would resign (he suggested to the admin that without his own career development he would have to consider resignation – M&amp;A stress is part of the driving factor I think).

On the flip side, if I just make the concession, his team will start doing the required work, which would improve my KPIs with no effort on my part. I've been advised by a mentor that the best way to handle this is to be publicly supportive, treat them like they are delivering on all their promises, and if he struggles, I could be completely gracious about it and offer to take it back on to help.