I’ve been busier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. It’s been a bit difficult trying to balance all of my scales. Libra only has two weighing trays, but my life feels a little bit like a three or more tray scale, which clearly does not exist—I would have used a juggling reference, but don’t care for clowns. So far, I’m managing.
It’s a better place now that the fiscal year is coming to an end—the fiscal year actually ended June 30, but we’re still finalizing a few stragglers. But as no good deed goes unpunished, neither do the tasks in this new role. Just because fiscal year 2015-16 ended, doesn’t mean that my work has stopped. No. Now we get to begin fiscal year 2016-17! This will be the first time that I’ve been in this position for an entire fiscal year, from beginning to end, where the demands of my role far exceed of those in past years. It’s both exciting and nerve-wracking, fulfilling and frustrating. All at the same time.
Right now one of the struggles I’m having is people stepping on my toes. Not literally, of course, but essentially bypassing me and going over my head. It tends to happen with reports that are sent for internal review and that are new to me. In general, those (i.e., unit managers) that need to contribute to the reports are skipping over me and providing their input directly to my section manager. First, this is frustrating and a little bit annoying as I’m fully capable of completing the task, they’re just not used to me doing it. Second, it has thus far resulted in a slight duplication of work, which I then have to correct. In a perfect world, I would email a reminder to the unit managers that this report requires input by a particular day/time. Each of them would enter their input onto the provided template and email it back to me—this is where I seem to be getting skipped. Once I receive all of the separate pieces, it’s my job to compile everyone’s input into one template and forward it to the section manager for further review. I’ve been doing this report—or rather, supposed to be doing it—for the past three months, and this is the first month where it almost went as intended. With any luck, next month will be smoother.
Ensuring that everything gets done it getting a bit easier, and until the rhythm becomes more consistent, there are bound to be speed bumps and wrong turns, but so far I haven’t crashed the car.