All, doing a 5 minute freewrite. Thank you for reading.
"What's happened to our supply levels? The director stormed into the meeting room.
"Why didn't we have enough supplies to perform maintenance?"
A brave soul spoke up and mention, "Boss, while we would want to order supplies to ensure a strong inventory, there is a current trade embargo enforced upon us for trading with that a certain country which is supplying this material that just happened 1 week ago and now we can't import it."
The enraged director still not satisfied and questioned why wasn't there an alternative supplier or source from another country. The staff were all puzzled because this embargo is not a news that happened only today. And it is well known that that particular country is the only exporter this particular raw material and the procurement have already escalated this since last week when the embargo happened. And the next moment, the director just shouted, "Then how? No solution?"
The brave soul just replied, "If we would have known how, we wouldn't have called for this meeting to discuss potential mitigation plan for qualify a different material that might be able to steer the situation to a better state."
He then told the director, "We needed help from management, not another round of drilling and questioning." He walked out and immediately tendered his resignation letter.
Sometimes, it is better to listen for people in leadership to what the team is already working on than to jump to conclusions and throw weight around. You might end up losing a precious team member.