. . . despite protestations to the contrary, the new curriculum seems to focus on vocational training for commerce and industry . . .
We have no name for it.
I heard in the shell
All the hymns of hell,
I heard all the angels crying,
I heard the earth
In pangs of birth
And all the galaxies dying. . . .
I heard in the shell
The throb of each cell
From flower and rock and feather.
But loudest of all
Rang the quiet call
Of Yes and No singing together.
John Betjeman.
“More like turning all the cargo in your hold than moving all the furniture, anyone can survive the furniture being moved. It’s when you feel the cargo shifting in your interior that you feel a boy.”
Well done! You’ve come a long way since you finished reading the first booklet in this series. All that stuff about time being a finite resource which needs to be spent like a budget item seems to be imprinted on your brain. You’ve worked out your objectives and how to classify all the work you do according to whether it’s active and achieves those objectives, or whether it’s a reactive task. Importance and urgency are two standard work classifications for you now, and you schedule your time using your diary and wall charts for quick, visual updates on work in progress, holidays, deadlines, etc. And judging by the way you use it, your ‘To Do’ list is amongst your most prized possessions. You’ve really crashed the self-organisation barrier.
So how is the organising of the team going? You know, all those bits in the other booklet about organising other people; how to decide what to delegate, to whom to give the delegated task, how to train the person to do the job and how to stop yourself interfering. Oh yes, and the bits about telling all the other people about the change in responsibilities and then being available to the individual if they need advice, etc. So it wasn’t as painful an experience as you first thought. That’s good. Carrying the can for your team’s work isn’t very onerous if you follow a delegation plan because, in fact, very little can go wrong.
You sound as if you’ve got the whole thing taped now – with more time to spend on priorities and long-term planning. Your staff seem to be more involved, motivated and responsible as a consequence of your delegation. You should be very pleased with yourself.
Not deliriously happy, did you say? You’re still having a few problems with your staff? What sort of problems? I see. They don’t seem to understand what’s expected of them and their results aren’t what you’re looking for, and although they’re all doing very similar work their results are extremely dissimilar. Some of the staff seem to working hard but in the wrong direction, while others seem to be coasting although their results are good.
18.27 