Workplace organization and productivity tips

In My Humble Opinion
1

I just started a new job with my company and even though I’ve only been in this role a few days, it is already clear that the work environment will be quite different from my prior position. In my prior position, probably 90% of my work was completely self-directed–I had responsibility for certain things and could manage those items as I saw fit both substantively and administratively. I would involve my manager as necessary and would keep him in the loop on hot/active matters. Occasionally, I would receive a discrete project from my manager that would be dealt with as appropriate.

My new role is more of a management/executive position–so lots of meetings and e-mails requiring tracking/ownership/follow up on my part and then reporting on these matters to a team of people. Given this, my big concern is making sure (1) that nothing slips through the cracks and (2) that items I am responsible for get done in a timely manner. The biggest challenge is definitely going to be dealing with the avalanche of e-mails requiring more than an immediate response.

Keeping a master list and calendaring recurring projects/items is one solution and I already know I need to get out of my current habit of spending a great deal of my day simply slogging through and processing e-mails in favor of actually doing the work I need to do–which is tough given that I will likely be receiving upwards of 50 e-mails/day. In fact, on Friday, in one hour I received 42 e-mails! :eek:

In any event, for those of you in similar positions–any tips/suggestions/hacks? I don’t yet know what kind of administrative assistance I will have but if past experience is any indication, whatever assistance will be available will be of limited use; i.e., limited to copying/filing/expense reports with anything more substantive not really an option…

Thanks,
KSO

2

Speaking as a mid-level manager/executive type person, much of your role will consist of nothing more than slogging through emails, conference calls and meetings. The trick is delegating much of it in such a way that your team feels responsible for executing and following up on tasks and projects without your need for micromangement. That way you don’t become a bottleneck or a single point of failure for specific details slipping through the cracks.

Email and IM are great for keeping a record of requests and deliverables, but as you are finding out, they can easily turn into a endless stream of noise. More than 3 or so messages and it’s time to schedule a call/meeting and discuss.