Tag: management

Shuffle

We’re doing the conference call shuffle around here today.

I have a meeting at 12:30. I’ll be there. But wait, now I have a second meeting at the same time. You go to this one and I’ll go to the other one. But wait, the first meeting is cancelled. Good, I’ll go to the other meeting. But wait, that meeting is moving and another meeting is taking its place.

Monday, Monday. Can’t trust that day. Just don’t do what they did on Friday. Don’t book me into a meeting at 1:00pm. That’s my lunch time. Pretty please don’t mess with my lunch time.

Draining

What a day this one has been.

I was out on vacation last week and it was glorious. Today I went back to work for the first time and KA-BOOOM!!! A huge administrative change was announced just as I punched in for the day. I had 506 emails in my inbox and a meeting with my manager at 9:00am and a meeting with my director at 10:00am and DAMN did that come out of nowhere and just bowl me over.

It’s nothing bad. It’s going to make me very busy through October and November and into the beginning of December, but busy in a good way. I just didn’t see it coming and it has left me feeling drained and worn and sort of like a wrung out dish rag today.

I mean, woah!

I Feel Bad About This

I feel like I dropped a ball at work. I did not, but I feel like I did.

One of the guys in my group was struggling with an issue on Friday. He was sending out chat messages to the rest of us during the morning and I was chipping in where I could. His problem involved a functionality that 10 years ago I was the authority on. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to look into it myself, but I am still often the guy who can straighten things out even though I don’t personally support customers anymore and therefore never have this sort of issue assigned to me directly.

He asked if anyone was available to jump on a video chat and look things over with him. Right about the same time my boss’ boss pulled a whole bunch of people, including me, into a different discussion and I had to shift my focus to that. By the start of the work day today (Monday) my issue was pretty much worked out but my coworker was still struggling. He was on another video call with a few people from other groups and they were trying to figure out what was going wrong. I joined the call and within a few minutes knew what the problem was and how to fix it.

Damn it.

By 10:00am today everything was fine and dandy and right as rain. That’s good. What I am upset with myself about is that if I could have just freed up a few minutes on Friday I could have saved my coworker a lot of stress and had it all wrapped up three days earlier. The customer would have been happy, my coworker would have been happy, and I would have felt like a (very minor) hero. Instead, I feel like let everyone down. Again, I did not, and the thing I was looking at on Friday is really important and has all sorts of upper management eyes on it, but I still wish I could have been there for my coworker sooner than I was. That’s all.

Leadership

Bloganuary writing prompt
What makes a good leader?
View all responses

I have no idea. If I knew, I would be a better leader than I am. Granted at work I am only a leader of four people and they are all excellent at their jobs so it makes my job easy. Still, having said that, if I could be better I would be better. 

If I can’t give you something that makes you a good leader, I can give you something that makes you a friggin’ pain in the ass leader. Simple: Don’t micromanage. Ugh, working for a micromanager is infuriating. Seriously. I mean, I don’t know if this is true at all, but it’s what I heard, Jimmy Carter is a great man but he was a shitty President though. Why? Rumor has it he was a bit of a micromanager. If that’s true, it’s got to be the reason why his presidency went down the one-term crapper. 

If you want to be a good leader, don’t be a micromanager.