This Saturday morning as I'm cranking through emails and trying to do my best to be productive and get through the mound of emails I had, I got an email from my supervisor that I'm sending too many emails and that it's difficult to sort through all the information. She also sent me a "stop it and this is the last time I'm warning you email", which, of course, did not feel good. So, I paused and reflected. In honor of the 5 whys I figured I'd give it a go here:
Problem: People are confused with all of the information coming at them from varied sources
why: the information often comes without enough context, or with context that is difficult to navigate in a thread
why: the time isn't taken to organize the information by priority and context
why: there is a lot of work to do, and in order to get things off of the plate and into the realm of visibility for others to process, the expedient approach is taken
why: because I feel responsibility to keep all the things moving forward
why: because I feel that my value is wrapped up in keeping all the things moving forward.
So, as I run through this root cause analysis, I feel that in order to be worth the money paying for me, I have to keep the engine sizzling. But if it really comes down to a value assessment of myself, then I have to re-evaluate my strategy. Sure, I am valuable if I am able to get things accomplished, however, if things are unclear or others are disgruntled, there are ways that I am working against myself and the organization.
I know that I have to take more time to come up with a strategic plan, but it's hard to find the time to do that, and it's hard to know all the things that should be in the strategic plan when I'm still learning the things that would go into the strategic plan. What I'm going to make a point of doing from here is using my strategy document and refining according to priorities, making sure those priorities are also organizational priorities, and not just the priorities I think the organization should have. That is the way that I am working against myself. Once I've accomplished dutifully the items that organization needs me to accomplish, and have done it well, thereafter I'll be extended trust to accomplish the items that I think are the most important for us to move forward.
There's a few captures I wanted to include for this blog. It's kind of a call and response of axioms:
Overwhelmed people overwhelm people. Pause and reflect.
Haste makes waste. Slow is smooth, smooth is steady, steady is fast.
And here's some extra reading:
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