Dear Bob ...
I'll have to make this short, because I have no time. I'm so buried in work I have to schedule time to go to the facilities. Literally.
I'm the CIO for a 60-person IT department (75 until two months ago) in a company of 700 employees (1,000 two months ago). I arrived on the scene two years ago, replacing a predecessor who was, to put it kindly, ineffective. (To put it unkindly, he was a walking disaster and it was contagious.)
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I've been trying to clean up the mess ever since I got here, but it's so big and extends in so many directions I've been stretched pretty thin.
To be honest, I was pretty close to collapse before the layoffs. Now I don't even know how I get through the day. It feels like I'm jumping from one crisis to the next, and no matter what I do, it doesn't seem to make a dent.
But there's nothing I do that's optional.
Help?
- Buried
Dear Buried ...
Welcome to the infinite pile of work. At some point in their careers, most conscientious managers find themselves buried by it.
It works like this: Infinity isn't a number. You can't add and subtract from it. Infinity minus 3 equals infinity. Infinity minus 10,352 equals infinity. Therefore, Infinity minus 3 equals infinity minus 10,352.
This is relevant to you because conscientious managers (as well as non-managerial employees) can always find something that isn't being done that would be valuable to do. To conscientious managers, that is, the pile of work is infinite.
Which means that if you spend your day digging away at the infinite pile of work and measure your success by how much it's shrunk, you'll never be anything but a failure. It's infinite, which means you can't shrink it.
What you need is an outline. And an appreciation for progress.
The outline will make the infinite finite. The appreciation for progress will let you manage your workload. Here's how it works:
Take everything you're doing, delegating, or think you should be doing or delegating. Now find no more than seven subject headings that cover them all.
I know you don't have time to do this. Too bad -- do it anyway. Call in sick, claim laryngitis, don't answer the phone, and ignore your e-mails. The infinite pile of work won't go anywhere, and the good news is, it won't grow while you're gone: Infinity plus 423 still equals infinity.
So -- find no more than seven subject headings that among them cover everything everyone needs to be doing. Pick three you'll personally attend to; delegate the others in their entirety to someone else who reports to you. Your involvement will be no more than an hour a week for a progress review, plus whatever political intervention can only come from your office.
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