Last time we described some of the ways people acquire more work than they can handle. Sources include job design, assignments by supervisors, a sense of obligation, political tactics, and many more. Let's turn now to strategies and tactics that can reduce your workload while maintaining your image as a productive, dedicated team member or employee.
- Ask for help
- Asking for help can be difficult. For some of us, asking for help is equivalent to admitting deficiency, because we feel that all requests of us are by definition reasonable.
- Reasonableness is subjective. A request is reasonable only if you regard it as reasonable. When someone else considers a request of you to be reasonable, that might be interesting, but it isn't definitive. You are the ultimate arbiter of reasonableness.
- Asking for help doesn't mean that you're unable to do the work. It might mean that you're unable to do the work in the time required, due to other demands on your time.
- Ask for time
- The key For some of us, asking
for help is equivalent to
admitting deficiencyto keeping your workload light is preventing the arrival of new tasks and responsibilities. And the most effective preventer is the perception by others that you have responsibilities more important than whatever they were about to pass along to you. - One way to build this perception is to ask for more time to complete a task. But don't ask for more time after you've committed to a particular deadline. Ask instead before you commit — make it part of your agreement to take on the task.
- The general formula is "Yes, I can do that, but I would need a little more time to do it than you had in mind. I can do it by X." You might not get what you're asking for, but the requestor, and any other observers, will gain an appreciation for your workload, and that could deter any additional requests.
- Stay in your own hula-hoop
- Controlling the urge to take on work voluntarily can be difficult. Work that remains undone, and which blocks your own progress, is especially tempting, as is work that a political rival wants to do. To control these urges, remember the hula-hoop metaphor.
- The essential idea is that doing your own work becomes impossible when you start trying to do the work of others. If you try to do your own job and some else's too, you'll do neither well.
- Whenever you find yourself considering taking on a new responsibility, ask yourself, "Why am I considering doing this?"
These three strategies are powerful, but they don't cover every case that can lead to overload. For instance, they don't help defend against the abusive supervisor who knowingly overloads subordinates. Abusive overloading is the topic for next time. First in this series Next in this series Top Next Issue
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Related articles
More articles on Workplace Politics:
- Ten Tactics for Tough Times: I
- When you find yourself in a tough spot politically, what can you do? Most of us obsess about the situation
for a while, and then if we still have time to act, we do what seems best. Here's Part I of a set of
approaches that can organize your thinking and shorten the obsessing.
- Dismissive Gestures: III
- Sometimes we use dismissive gestures to express disdain, to assert superior status, to exact revenge
or as tools of destructive conflict. And sometimes we use them by accident. They hurt personally, and
they harm the effectiveness of the organization. Here's Part III of a little catalog of dismissive gestures.
- Why Don't They Believe Me?
- When we want people to believe us, and they don't, it just might be a result of our own actions or demeanor.
How does this happen?
- Gratuitous Complexity as a Type III Error
- Some of the technological assets we build — whether hardware, software, or procedures —
are gratuitously complex. That's an error, but an error of a special kind: it can be the correct solution
to the wrong problem.
- Concealed Capability Inversions: Questions
- A capability inversion occurs when the person in charge of an effort is far less knowledgeable than
are the people doing that work. Capability inversions are common and usually harmless if effectively
addressed. But when the person in charge conceals the inversion, and falsely claims expertise he or
she lacks, trouble looms.
See also Workplace Politics and Managing Your Boss for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
- Coming May 1: Antipatterns for Time-Constrained Communication: 2
- Recognizing just a few patterns that can lead to miscommunication can reduce the incidence of miscommunications. Here's Part 2 of a collection of antipatterns that arise in communication under time pressure, emphasizing those that depend on content. Available here and by RSS on May 1.
- And on May 8: Antipatterns for Time-Constrained Communication: 3
- Recognizing just a few patterns that can lead to miscommunication can reduce the incidence of problems. Here is Part 3 of a collection of antipatterns that arise in technical communication under time pressure, emphasizing past experiences of participants. Available here and by RSS on May 8.
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Beware any resource that speaks of "winning" at workplace politics or "defeating" it. You can benefit or not, but there is no score-keeping, and it isn't a game.
- Wikipedia has a nice article with a list of additional resources
- Some public libraries offer collections. Here's an example from Saskatoon.
- Check my own links collection
- LinkedIn's Office Politics discussion group