Whenever my inbox goes beyond the 50 messages that fit on the first page in Gmail, my heart starts to beat a little faster. I take deep breaths to stay grounded and in the moment. It’s an unofficial measure of when I have taken on too much and am in the weeds. When the inbox perpetually stays over 50, then I know that I’m a bottleneck.
Other indicators are when my pile of notes grows, and contains repetitive sticky notes. Good thing I wrote down “call Sally” and “fix Joe’s payroll tax issue” three or four different times and promptly stacked more notes on top of these. Also, when I get more than two weeks behind on my calendar tasks – we’re in the danger zone for sure!
For short moments or seasons, operating this way is acceptable. When it becomes the norm, then I start asking questions. Are clients and team members getting responses in a reasonable timeframe? Am I shifting from a proactive to a reactive mode of operating? Am I enjoying myself? Are things still win-win for most parties most of the time? What can change to bring my work life back into flow?
Letting these questions simmer has helped shape the future focus of Gibson Insight. We’re excited to be slowly developing our Bookkeeper Mentorship program. The goal is to work with bookkeepers to help them broaden their technical skills, grow as professionals, and deliver higher level service to their clients or companies.
I’ve realized that I can have a bigger impact by helping mid-level bookkeepers become super stars. This will also help keep me out of bottleneck land. Developing a group of trusted, skilled bookkeepers to refer work out to will mean I can keep saying yes to finding solutions for people, without making the bottleneck worse.
What are your metrics for noticing when work is getting unruly? What questions do you ask? What solutions have you discovered by considering the answers that bubble up?
Recent Comments