09 Jul 17
PERMANENTLY CHASING YOUR TAIL
The feeling of being behind with our work and chasing you tail as it were is something most adults are probably familiar with. My advice is actually to learn to live with it and try not to let yourself spin out of control. I think sometimes the feeling of having too much to do actually stops you from doing anything at all. Feeling stressed, tired and under pressure often makes me run around in circles – like a dog chasing its tail – achieving nothing and not moving forward.
So what is my advice in terms of this fairly unchangeable yet far from ideal set of circumstances?
You have to keep making those lists and spend your time working towards completing the items listed, sometimes that may mean merely changing the order of things on them around! This really helps me to focus. The basic headings on your to-do-list must stay the same, these need to be your core deliverables. When I was the operations manager at Equal Education I was responsible for Finance, Human Resources and General Operations which include the office and its environment and a certain level of organizational development. It is the items under these headings and their order that will change but those three things could never move off my agenda. It is vital to keep your eye on the ball regarding this stuff and to prioritise correctly. You cannot be worrying about writing a policy for petrol reimbursements when you have a disciplinary issue to deal with or if there is a crisis in the finance department, those items will have to move up your list and your policy writing is going to have to wait for a quieter time. Yes… Writing these documents and implementing procedures are important and can be urgent but generally not in the same way as dealing with something like a disciplinary issue which has to be done immediately. I have definitely learnt this the hard way. These are also not issues which you can shift over to anyone else’s responsibility – it may be that a certain manager must be involved in the discipline issue but ultimately if HR is your responsibility, you have to make sure that it is dealt with.
As an operations manager you have to keep your eye on a few balls at the same time and make sure that you are looking at the overall picture too. You will need people in place to do the vital work in each of your areas of responsibility but you have to make sure that the balls are all staying up in the air.
Check in next week for some some tips on where it’s important not to fall behind!
by Michelle Adler