Has this ever happened to you, twice?

I don’t know what’s going on at work these days. Everyone is so pressed and stressed. We are coming up on our fiscal year-end close. That means late nights and weekends for some and headaches for everyone. It also means deadlines. Whenever there is a new project assigned at my work it’s either due by the end of one’s performance review period, by the end of the calendar year, or by the end of the fiscal year. The problem with fiscal end projects is that everyone is already so out of their mind with financial worries that they aren’t really available to work on anything else with all their senses.

I’m juggling three big projects (and 20 other things) right now. That’s nothing new. But 2 of these have to happen right now.

These aren’t really my projects. They are supposed to be owned by someone else – a manager. There is supposed to be a clear group of SMEs dedicated to helping with the content. And I’m supposed to help develop training. But right now, I’m missing these two very important elements.

At every turn I’m being asked, when is the training going to be done? And with every email I send out and every call I make asking for content/feedback/input/responses – I get nothing. People are too busy.

Or worse. I get a lot of new information. Or different information. Or conflicting information. I get one manager telling me he/she is in charge and another showing up in my cube to tell me what to do. In one case we are creating training before the policy has even been completed! Hmm.. This might be a little cart-before-the-horse-ish.

This is sounding like a rant, I know. It is. In reality, I’m just rolling with it. When asked about the timing, I am clear what obstacles are lying in my way. I am clear that I am ready when they are ready. If it was a project I could just take the lead on, I would. Unfortunately in both these cases I cannot. So, I’m just breathing deeply.

I breathe especially deep through the two-hour meetings where we are supposed to be reviewing training whose content I took directly from published material and the group spends most of the meeting arguing about whether or not the statements are true.

Everything is just backwards. We are all so pressed. They are so desperate to get that training out there, that we can’t take the time we need to get clear on our vision, our training objectives, our facts, our plan. All that is just out the window.

I will, of course, do my best possible work under these conditions so that when the training is finally completed I will still be happy (hopefully) to have my name associated with it.

Thanks for listening.