Whoohoo! I’ve been swallowed by work for the last three weeks and today I finally feel like I’m somewhat ahead of the curve again. I love working with Americans[1] – they can hang around and shoot the breeze as much as anyone but there are times when they hunker down and just keep going and going and going. The last three weeks have been such a time.
I’ve taken a new role which is completely operational. Whereas my previous role was very analytical and planned my day now involves two queues of stuff coming in and a weekly prioritization that determines how those issues get routed and queued up for others. Sounds boring? Not at all – my inbox has achieved a zen-like state of emptiness; incoming queries are responded to as soon as possible and the email is immediately archived – gone. My previous, analytical role involved long email trails that had to be organized filed into 3-deep folders for reference purposes. Now I don’t organize anything in my inbox – it literally is a box from which things are expunged as soon as possible. However, the organization of my queues is an entirely different story, those queues are kept pristine and comprehensive, they are my legacy for now.
On the side I’ve also been involved in planning the next generation of my current role – the requirement is to deal with double or even triple the load that we currently are and the question is how to do it. And that’s another thing which is great about working with Americans – executives are not treated as special in a serious conversation. When strategizing and planning it’s a level playing field and the higher up you go the flatter the conversation becomes; all that counts is the quality of your understanding and ideas.
But the result of this is that I’ve been doing nothing but think about this business and what’s coming our way in August for the last three weeks. We’re close to settling the plan for August but there are still a few hurdles to cross.
Hence the breathing; today I am thinking about something else; like the Gomez show that we saw a week or so ago, or the things that I’ve been seeing around town. Of course I don’t have anything ready to post[2], but the weeks have been rockin’ and summer is blazin’ and I’m seeing interesting things and having complex conversations.
In lieu of anything else, here are some photos.
Red Leaves
TK-421 WHY ARENT YOU AT YOUR POST?
Veins
Gomez at Stubbs BBQ
3 Comments
If you’re looking for some techniques to manage the chaos I can recommend:
http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2008/07/22/the_taste_of_the_day.html
http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2008/08/18/the_trickle_lis.html
http://pomodorotechnique.com/resources/cirillo/ThePomodoroTechnique_v1-3.pdf
Good luck with the ‘new’ role
C
What is interesting is that my day now requires almost no planning, although I do do a lot of planning of other peoples’ days. My day has turned into ‘sit down, answer the phone, work the queues, work the inbox, walk around, talk to people, work the queues’ – very simple.
Also, my email etiquette has descended to something resembling text messaging. And I’ve even taken to writing posts with as little punctuation as possible as evidenced by the above.
Now that you point it out, you tend to overuse the hyphen, or what you Americans call the ‘dash’. (I on the other hand, am a serial comma abuser)
I really encourage you to read ‘Rands’
http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2009/01/25/a_disclosure.html
He’s probably the most interesting blogger on the art and science of managing geeks. And in case you hadn’t noticed, you my friend are now management.