Balancing the Controlled Burn vs. the Forest Fire

This week I have had bouts with managing my time between scheduled items that are improvements to our infrastructure and the “Hey, this is the single most important thing in the world to me” items. I know it’s the nature of the beast. So, I guess I have to figure out how to balance the politely ignore unimportant request versus putting a DND sign on my door.

So this balancing act gets extra tedious in non-ownership management roles. Because in this case, you have items falling on you from above, sideways, upwards, and diagonally. They will come in all levels of importance and from seventy different directions. They will come far and wide, from your boss, from employees, from clients, from vendors, from fellow managers. All while in the middle of a fire. How do you say? “Not now”. That part is easy, but how to say it without sounding like a complete subhuman species of ill manners.

Here’s my concern, folks will appear to be ok with pushback but most deep down feel like they are getting blown off merely because you don’t want to do what they ask. When in reality, however big you perceive your problem to be, the one I am working on instead, is just ever so slightly bigger. And not only that, I find myself in this pattern: If I stop what I am doing, then my controlled burn can quickly turn into a forest fire that I then have to put out myself!

How do you handle this?

Carlos Lascano
VP Support Services, ExchangeDefender
carlos@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x737