2 assignments 4 paragraphs for each assignment

Respond to at least two of your colleagues' postings in one or more of the following ways:

· Share a similar experience and compare your approach with that of your colleague.

· Offer additional or alternative strategies that your colleague could consider when faced competing priorities.

· Offer suggestions about how you might have done things in a similar situation

Note what you have learned and/or any insights that you have gained as a result of the comments your colleagues made.

1st Colleague to respond to:

In my profession, there are often times where tasks are demanding, and we must learn to multitask our daily actions.  Our daily tasks consist of multiple applications to be interviewed and processed along with meeting with clients and answering their questions and meeting their needs.  Also, when a colleague is out of the office and their applications need to be interviewed and processed, the managers often split their caseload among the other caseworkers to handle.  The effective executive does not begin by “planning----he starts out by determining how he’s spending his time (Drucker, 1967).  I mainly start out thinking how my workday is going to go and then I get hit with a curve ball, and I would have to go a different route.  One morning, I came to work and already knew where I was going to begin with my day.  My manager walks into my office and asked me to take on additional work that needed to be completed by lunch time.  On top of my own work, I had someone else’s work to complete before lunch.  Of course, I put my work to the side and started on the new job task so that there would not be any problems between myself and my manager.  I decided since the work that was just added to my list should be done first since my own work did not have to be completed until later that week.  I try to have my work caught up just in case there maybe additional work that need to be done and the manager asks me to complete it.  I did not have to take on the additional work, but it was for my colleague and she was out unexpectedly.  If I did not fulfil those job duties, then her work would have been behind which means that the client’s needs would not have been met.  I felt the need to not punish the client because my colleague was not able to be at work that day.  I did it for the organization. 

            Things that can distract me from making sure that my job tasks are completed are when colleagues consistently walk in and out of your office.  We have instances where we have problem applications that need additional help from colleagues.  Most of the time my colleagues come to me with multiple questions throughout the day because they feel like our manager is not someone that they can talk to.  This is a distraction at times because I have several tasks that I must get done and every time someone enters my office it stops me from doing what I have to do.  Another distraction is additional work being added to my daily tasks by my manager.  I feel that my manager can take on some of the responsibility instead of delegating all the tasks to her team.  A good manager shouldn’t want you to feel overwhelmed (Gallo, 2017).

            Determining how to manage my priorities depends on how well I can organize my daily job tasks.  According to Henry (2012), in order for your priorities to even matter, you need to have some sort of a personal productivity system in place to which you hold yourself accountable—and in which your priorities will actually matter.  You must come to the realization of what is the most important thing to work first and take on that task then everything else will come after.  If you do not determine what is most important, then you will be all over the place with trying to complete your work.  You must prioritize or have some sort of organization of your work in order to complete your tasks accurately and timely.  I have learned how to prioritize my work by determining what is urgent, what is important, and delegate what is least important.  Eisenhower (2017) states that the things that need to be done first are considered urgent, the things that are less urgent can be scheduled to complete at a later time, and things that is not so important to you but are important to others can be delegated.  I will have to incorporate this method the next time I am being asked to work additional work.  I will use the “no” method that was discussed by Gallo (2017) by providing a clear short explanation for why I cannot do what I have been asked to do.  I am sure that my manager would be shocked because I rarely say “no” and she knows that she can always give me extra work and I take it.  As for me, it will make me feel good knowing that there is a way to decline additional work without sounding so forceful and mean.

 

References

Drucker, P. F. (1967). How effective executives use their time. Management Review, 56(10), 18. [Seminal]   

Eisenhower. (2017). Introducing the Eisenhower Matrix. Retrieved from http://www.eisenhower.me/eisenhower-matrix/  

Gallo, A. (2017). HBR’s best on saying no to more work. Harvard Business Review Digital Articles.

Henry, A. (2012). How to prioritize when everything is important. Retrieved from http://lifehacker.com/5877111/how-to-prioritize-when-everything-is-important

 

2nd Colleague to respond:

In my current role I am constantly in a position where I am juggling multiple and competing demands. My department reports directly into the CEO’s office and therefore there are high expectations placed on my team and me. At the end of each quarter, which is typically our busiest time, reports and status updates need to be submitted to the senior leadership team and board of directors. In my role, I find myself in a regular state of having to manage multiple priorities. For example, I am responsible for connecting with twenty project leads on board facing projects and ensuring that their projects are being executed effectively within the triple constraint model of project delivery- on time, in scope and within budget. Along with having to connect with several stakeholders across the organization on the status of their projects, I am responsible for producing regular reports to the board of directors. I also manage our team’s internal website, produce educational project management content for our organization so that they understand how to effectively deliver projects, support our department’s software implementation and oversee the work of our co-op students. In order to manage these multiple tasks with overlapping deadlines, I perform the exercise of mapping out daily, weekly and monthly goals based on an item’s priority level and due date. Working backwards from deadlines is also a strategy I use to understand priorities (Henry, 2012). Also, by assigning a priority level to tasks, whereby I know which ones are considered the most pressing or urgent, I will tackle those ones first. As I also have co-op students who report to me, I have been delegating certain tasks to them so that it provides me with more bandwidth to work on higher priority items.

Certainly, my role can be stressful, and part of that stress comes from my inability to say no. Since I am new in my role and am trying to prove my value and worth to the team, I have been taking on more work than I should, and I realize there is a cost to that in terms of the quality of work I am able to produce. Therefore, I am working to have more open conversations with my director explaining what I have capacity to do and not do, and those discussions with her have been surprisingly quite positive.  Of course, there are certain “must-do” items like the board reporting, however I have worked with my director to suggest de-prioritizing some tasks and pushing out their deadlines so that I can focus on more pressing matters. Sometimes my focus can be split, and I can get distracted from completing urgent tasks when I have requests for meetings, the flooding of emails in my inbox, or when I receive notifications on Microsoft Teams from the over twenty project leads I work with to ensure their projects are being executed properly. My calendar is filled with meetings which consumes a lot of my day, taking away valuable time that I need to complete my own work. I have tried to curb this issue by putting in blocks of work time in my calendar so that no one books over that block, however this is not always possible.

I believe in staying calm under pressure and communicating regularly with my team and clients in case of shifting priorities. I am accountable to a number of people within my organization, therefore it is imperative that I am able to effectively manage my priorities otherwise I can compromise my own reputation and that of my department. After reviewing this week’s Learning Resources, I have learned that effective executives and leaders are those that focus on doing one thing at a time and understand how each hour of their day will be spent (Drucker, 1967). Additionally, there are several key learnings from the Eisenhower matrix for time management that I plan to use. For example, the matrix illustrates how no more than eight tasks should be assigned in one of each of the four quadrants – do first, schedule, delegate and don’t do (Eisenhower, 2017). It is also important that I do not allow others to distract me from my tasks and nor should I allow others to define my priorities (Eisenhower, 2017).

References

Drucker, P.F. (1967). How effective executives use their time. Management Review, 56(10), 18. [Seminal]

Eisenhower. (2017). Introducing the Eisenhower Matrix. Retrieved from http://www.eisenhower.me/Eisenhower-matrix/

Henry, A. (2012). How to prioritize when everything is important. Retrieved from http://life-hacker.com/5877111/how-to-prioritize-when-everything-is-important