Hi everyone,
This is another Welcome to the Club edition, for our new colleague Jennifer Laflam. So, once again, I’ve collected several responses to the same question — one that’s been really helpful to me: What’s the best process or system (or rule or tradition) you’ve set up for yourself or your department/office?
From The Dean’s List #1
This is gonna sound kind of dopey: I think probably the best overall process isn't a specific one, but is to kind of read the room and base the system on them, on the individuals. What’s the best process with them, you know? Some people don’t really need to meet a lot, and they’ll cc me on the things they want me to know about. And some people really want to communicate about a lot of stuff — and even though that’s kind of exhausting for me, I’m happy to do it. I mean, when I realized I couldn't have one system, what I really learned is, people just communicate better if you kind of do it around them. And I realized I could be more flexible. Even though that requires a certain kind of resilience on my part, it's actually easier than trying to make everything fit into that little box, you know?
From The Dean’s List #4
I don’t like finding solutions; I like making things better. The games that I used to play as a kid that I liked the most were—well, do you remember Boggle? So, you're looking at the same letters as everybody else, but you only get points for the words you see that nobody else saw. I approach a lot of things like that. What can I see here that maybe nobody else is seeing? I throw out a lot of crazy ideas that don't get very far, but what's cool about that is I get feedback on why that won't work. But sometimes I'll throw out an idea that turns out to be really helpful.
From The Dean’s List #8
Honestly, I think one of the things that's working really well — and it's what I've been doing since we've gone remote — is having these set times that I meet with the office staff. That's always on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. One of the great things about Thursday afternoon is that it's after ALC and it's after the deans meeting, so I can update them. It's not that I didn't communicate with them when we were on ground, it just wasn't this set. It's one of the things I want to continue once we're back on ground.
Another thing — It's not really a process — but just kind of a general approach, is that I'm going to be transparent. I'm going to be honest with my folks. I trust them when I say, “Look, this is cone-of-silence and this can't go past you guys.” I trust that they're going to respect that. Obviously, I've had multiple vent sessions with my immediate supervisor and also many of my colleagues, but my mom taught me you don't vent down. You vent up, right? Well, you can't always vent up. Sometimes, it has to come a different way. Sometimes, the conversations I'm having with the people who report to me are — I don't want to classify them as venting, but I just kind of allow all of us to express some frustration. I think that's good because I start to hear things that they might not have shared with me.
From The Dean’s List #10
I think the document we use to build and staff the schedule. It’s a pretty high functioning spreadsheet that allows us to keep moving on building and staffing the schedule without even having to email each other. There are drop-downs to tell me or the other people involved what the next thing to do is. Like, the offer is accepted, so we change the status to “send to ISA,” or mark it as “offered” till we hear back from faculty, so we really know exactly where are all the time. We can sort it in all kinds of handy ways. When I got the job, all of that was still happening on paper, so it was pretty radical and just completely transformed the time it takes, and the accuracy.
Another thing we’re trying is a thing I call the budget book. It’s a spreadsheet tabbed for each budget we’re a part of. The crew updates it from PS Financials a couple times a month, and we keep the history of what we’ve done with those budgets in the same sheet. The requests, the allocations, etc. It’s just a way simpler way for me to look at budgets and understand the context and history better than it is to dig through PS financials for a day.
Besides that, we also have a theme for each day of the week in the office. Monday is scheduling and staffing, Tuesday is personnel — which is evaluations and hiring, Wednesday is money, which is buying stuff and payroll issues and Friday is about catch up and communication. That’s when I send out updates to the division and go through longer emails I want to write to people — or read. That’s been really great, because even when things get super crazy, I know I’m at least going to check in on that topic in a week. Also, when it’s crazy for me, staff are working on those things on those days. So it helps me delegate, too.
From The Dean’s List #13
I think it's kind of the combination between the twice weekly staff meetings and [using Microsoft] Outlook and Tasks. One thing that I do when I’m deciding what to delegate is I make sure that I have a list of what they're doing on my task list. So I can kind of move those around and check in with them when they should be done as well. Giving them a to-do list has been really helpful as well. Not only creating my own, but creating theirs and letting them know if I see a priority that they didn't catch. I will reorganize their priorities, but they usually give me the priority of items they're going to take care of. I've been having them copy me on things and it's really helped me let go knowing they'll get it done.
From The Dean’s List #17
You know, when we're working in person, I rely really heavily on in-person communication with my team members. That's my preferred method of checking in with people. My door is always open and I think people who work for me would agree with me there. I do a lot of checking in, too, just to kind of get the pulse of what's going on in our spaces. We can get a different sense of things by looking in person as opposed to just communicating via email. So that's really important to me when we are working on campus.
My door, it's a revolving door, when we're physically at work and, and I mean that in a good way, because I want people to come in. That also takes time from your day, but I truly feel like that's the work we need to do. I also feel like when we invest more time in those conversations that may take up time, it pays off in the end. If you do a cost benefit analysis, it's worth it to invest a little bit more time when people need you, than to try to clean up a mess on the other end because you didn't make time for it.
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Something to think about:
“What is one repeating problem that you can automate or eliminate today?”
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The Rabbit Hole (resources, content, etc. that are relevant to the job):
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