Discussion responses Week 3

Respond to 2 of your colleagues' postings in one or more of the following ways:

· Provide feedback to your colleague about avoiding productivity traps in future and offer a suggestion to further strengthen your colleague’s approach.

· Offer additional insights to your peer about the implications for managers of juggling multiple, competing priorities that impact various stakeholders.

· Offer other lessons that you learned from your colleague(s) that will help you juggle your priorities or avoid productivity traps.

General Guidance: Your Discussion responses, due by Day 7, should be 1–2 paragraphs in length as a general expectation/estimate.

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:

  Communication can play a huge role in how tasks are prioritized amongst management and employees. Determining which task should be prioritized first can cause a considerable struggle.  Morgenstern discusses the four root causes of bottlenecking, which are plate-spinning, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and processing intuitively.  Each one of those root causes can create more problems, a lack of success, and tremendous stress (Morgenstern, 2016).

Personal Bottleneck

            Based on my research, the root cause of bottlenecking that I struggle with is plate-spinning and perfectionism. When I was promoted Director, it was a newly created position that required me to take on a new team and tasks that were previously split amongst three other departments. My role was somewhat unique and required me to fully evaluate the workload and tasks that had neglected by the prior departments. I needed to develop a new set of processes (functionally and technically) to meet the objectives of my newly formed department. Initially, my evaluation started very chaotically. I had trouble identifying where to start, which caused a lot of time spent unproductively. Not knowing where to start created a bottleneck as tasks were not being completed because a process did not exist. I was overwhelmed and could not maintain the amount of work I inherited. I was also known as a manager who gets results, which is why I was tasked with such high-level objectives. I lacked confidence, not knowing what to do, and did not want to complete anything less than the high-standards I was used to.

Feedback/Solutions

My new position put me in a vulnerable space that I was not used to. I decided to reach out to my boss and ask for some guidance. I know that management was supportive of me, but admitting that I was stuck felt like a failure in my mind. However, the guidance that I received was constructive and reconfirmed my motivation for accepting the promotion. I like to be challenged, and I needed to know that plate-spinning and perfectionism was holding me back. I had to be transparent with my new department, so we could problem solve and build our new structure together. I was thankful that being open about my challenges was well received by the team, and it helped create a more convergent environment.

I ultimately decided to leverage a tool I learned in a previous course regarding design thinking. Design thinking refers to the cognitive, strategic, and practical processes by which design concepts are developed. Brown (2008) states that design thinkers can imagine solutions that are inherently desirable and meet explicit or latent needs. I leveraged design thinking to understand, evaluate, and solution design the objectives of the team. I then prioritized tasks to help get them done.             

Conclusion

            With the root causes of bottlenecking, I learned that I tend to let my perfectionism create plate-spinning, and both leads can lead to ineffective management. I wanted to conquer the new role as I had done previously, but I had to learn how to slow down, reevaluate, and ask for help. Create simple policies for decisions made regularly is a tip that I could have used to get out of my productivity trap. The cognitive toll of decision making left me stagnant. I needed to preserve my decision making for issues that are worth my brainpower, and create policies for the rest (Morgenstern, 2016). Being a manager is an ongoing learning experience with positive and negative results. Communication, time management, and prioritizing is the key to being an effective manager.  Moving forward and learning from my mistakes has only enhanced my managerial skills.

 

References:

Brown, T. (2008, June). Design thinking. Harvard Business Review, 86(6), 84–92. 

Morgenstern, J. (2016). What to do when your to-do-list Is holding up your team. Harvard Business Review Digital Articles

2nd Colleague to respond to:

In this week’s reading, What to Do When Your To-Do List is Holding Up Your Team, by Julie Morgenstern she goes over briefly in regards to a senior editor, whom has become the bottleneck of department, “Tasks went into her office and never came out” (Morgenstern, 2016). In addition, Morgenstern goes over four root causes of bottlenecking and solutions for each one. The four root causes of bottlenecks are the following: plate-spinning, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and processing intuitively. After reading this article, I personally think it’s perfect timing to how I currently feel in my job. I think I’m personally struggling with plate-spinning, people-pleasing, and perfectionism.

According to the article, plate-spinning is when you have a scattered, shallow approach to managing multiple projects, feel overwhelmed, or feel disorganized and unsure what you’re doing is indeed most important (Morgenstern, 2016). As I previously mentioned in prior discussions I work as a Loan Coordinator for a mortgage company that manages loans for all 50 states. Since the pandemic began or became serious in mid-February/March we have been at our busiest, due to drop of interest rates. The drop of interest rates has had many individuals inquire to refinance their homes or purchase new homes, which is great for the Borrowers. However, for the staff working for the mortgage company we have had a huge pipeline of loans and it has been very difficult to manage a large pipeline. It has taken longer for Underwriters, Loan Coordinators, Closers, etc. to review the file before it can officially close due to the large volume we have and little time we have per day to dedicate to each loan. The solution to plate-spinning is to organize my time and tasks and ask my boss for priorities. Each day, my manager provides a list of new approvals I have to review. In addition, I try to prioritize purchases before refinances, because of the contingency date the buyer needs to make in order not to lose their deposit on the home.

The second bottleneck I’m experiencing is people-pleasing. When Loan Officers call me, message me, to ask for favors I don’t say no. As busy as I am I still do what they ask of me, which can be tedious or time consuming and not in my priority list. According to Morgenstern, the solution of people-pleasing is being clear how you should spent your time and start saying “no” to people (2016). Lastly, perfectionism is the other bottleneck that I experience. I started noticing for files that are purchases I’m spending too much time reviewing the file, reading through the documents, and makes me have less time to spend on refinances. The solution to this bottleneck is setting a limit on how much I contribute to a task and creating simple policies for decisions.

These three bottlenecks I experience daily at work, which has delayed the amount of files I submit into closing. I personally think I do a very great job getting the file clear to close, but my weakness has been from the clear to close to submitting the file into closing and the file closing, due to documents I need from my Closing Coordinator. My Closing Coordinator is responsible for requesting the homeowner’s insurance with our mortgagee clause and new loan number, and payoffs being up to date.  When I focus on files or work on tasks I make those decisions, because they’re either a purchase closing soon or the loan is low on lock days so I prioritize them. On Monday, I’m going to start saying no to people especially if the file is not in my priority list. In addition, start limiting the amount of time I spend on a file to make sure I can get through most of my pipeline. An example I think that might help a manager understand how to juggle all of the competing priorities they might face is first identifying what is your goal of the day. What tasks need to get done by the end of the day and you can also use the “Urgent-Important Matrix” made up of 4 quadrants that we learned this week. The Urgent-Important Matrix is made up of 4 quadrants: Do First (Urgent and important), Schedule (Important but less urgent), Delegate (Urgent but less important), and Don’t Do (less urgent and less important), which can help us prioritize our tasks daily.

Reference:

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

Morgenstern, J. (2016). What to do when your to-do-list Is holding up your team. Harvard Business Review Digital Articles