03.26.08
Chaos
I should never leave the office during the week. Chaos inevitably breaks out. Not that it doesn’t break out most days– it’s just that when I’m gone, I’m at a bit of a disadvantage of being in the loop of general information. Even checking email from home keeps me only partially in the loop, since face-to-face communication is impossible and I miss phone calls.
When I’ve been gone from my office, it seems like so many people come in with questions, problems, or just general chit-chat as soon as I return. The backlog of people running in and out of my office makes it near impossible to complete a simple task, like reply to an email of equal importance to the problems being brought to me in person. Some days I fantasize about assigning everyone a number– then they can’t come into my office until I call their number. It works for people returning stuff at Target. Closing the door doesn’t work– I’ve had people open it anyway and others stand outside, waiting to be noticed while I was participating in a teleconference or webinar.
It’s kind of nice when everyone goes home late in the afternoon; the phone stops ringing, the office visits stop and I can finally really concentrate. Unfortunately, it’s hard to dig into something that takes deep concentration when I have 30 minutes left and I’ve already worked almost an hour overtime. My brain is plumb worn out and my family is wondering if I’ll ever come home.
In a fit of desperation at the end of today, I threw a bunch of papers (all of them new problems) into my in-box. I knew it was probably a death-knell for them, since I didn’t file them and they represented a multitude of unresolved problems. But I wanted that clean desktop facing me tomorrow morning, so I’ll be prepared if (or when) more chaos breaks out. If I have a quiet moment during the day, I may pull out one of those papers and see if the problem has magically resolved itself.
03.25.08
Working from home
I’ve been on vacation for the last two days, so it’s anybody’s guess how bad my desk looks. So much for cleaning it off before I left! Oh well, if I look at the bright side, at least it will be obvious what landed there while I was gone. I’m sure it will be mostly problems and reading material that gets routed to me. Hopefully I can deal with that stuff quickly when I go in Wednesday afternoon.
I’ve been keeping up with my email from home, checking it twice a day (and sometimes at night) to keep it under control. When I checked it on Sunday, before my vacation even started, I was already getting a warning email saying I was reaching the maximum allowable size for my in-box. Geez! How’s that for falling behind before I was even gone?
I used to give my brother a hard time for working all the time when he was out of the office. He has a laptop and a Blackberry and is always working, everywhere he goes. In my case, I think being a manager makes me feel like I have a certain level of responsibility for what’s going on in my office, even when I’m not there. Technological improvements have not only allowed me to read my email from outside my office; they have enabled me to dial in to my desktop computer. Now I have access to all of my software and files as though I were sitting at my desk. It’s pretty cool. Okay, so I’m tied to the office with a technological umbilical cord. That’s probably not so cool.
Too late now– I’m hooked and there’s no turning back. It’s a dual-edged sword; I work in more places and for more hours than I could spend in the office, although the payoff is that I’m not as far behind when I return from being out of the office. Technology is both a blessing and a curse.
03.23.08
Getting along at work
I recently read the book Stop Pissing Me Off!: What to Do When the People You Work with Drive You Crazyby Lynne Eisaguirre. I admit I was drawn to this book by the title, but it wasn’t a flippant treatment of how to get along with employees, co-workers, and bosses. Instead, it gave me valuable advice on how to handle many annoying personality types and stressful situations at work.
Lynne begins the book by pointing out that there are annoying people in every corporation, so simply switching jobs to get away from them isn’t the solution. You’ll likely run into their type again. Since most of us spend more time at work than we do with family, we need to find ways to get along with people at work.
She says one of the reasons people have difficulty getting along at work is that in today’s workplace, there are so many differences between people: age, gender, religion, race, ethnic background, and culture. Many people are dealing with emotional problems, medical problems, mental problems, or are taking medication that adversely affects their behavior. It’s up to us to try to understand what could be going on in their life outside of work that could influence their behavior at work. I think this is even more important if you manage people, like I do.
She describes her 1-2-3-Go! technique for dealing with an emotionally charged situation. Here’s how it works (from p. 88):
1. Say something to the person that implies understanding or appreciation.
2. Make a behaviorally specific (doable) request. (It has to be something the person can do or say, or it’s not behaviorally specific.)
3. Add more appreciation and understanding.
4. Go away; do not nag, hover, or whine.
At the end of each chapter, she provides a chart summarizing the relationship tactics explained in the chapter. It’s called Your Relationship Toolbox and it shows how to go from being pissed off to powerful. She shows you how to manage your time and anger, so you can love the job you have. The very last chapter covers what to do if you’ve done all you could, but feel you must move on to a new job. She shows you how to do this without burning bridges in the process.
I highly recommend this book for both managers and their employees. I’ll buy a copy for my personal collection, since it helped me to better understand people in my organization and improved my ability to get along with them. I think some of Lynne’s advice could apply in personal relationships, as well.
