Example 7.6
You left work on Friday night and started a course at a nearby hotel on Monday morning. The course lasts for one week. At 12.30 pm on Wednesday, the tutor passes you a message asking you to return to your department as soon as
possi-ble. From what you can make out, the message is from a colleague who you try to phone, but you keep getting her voicemail. Before you left on Friday, you handed everything over to Pat, but from the message you understand that she has gone home feeling unwell.
You decide to excuse yourself for an hour since the group is about to break for lunch. You return to the office and are faced with eight situations. Prioritize these in the order you would be likely to deal with them.
1 There is a note on your desk saying that Lisa has been offered a job with another company. She wants to talk to you as soon as you return and you cal-culate that this discussion will only take about 15 minutes. Lisa is one of the most valuable members of your team.
2 Your telephone is indicating that there are messages on your voicemail.
3 You just know that when you switch on the computer there will be about 50 e-mail messages waiting for you. The irritating thing is that about half of them will be bulletins that are not relevant to you. Experience has shown that it will only take about five minutes to delete these and you might stumble across some really urgent e-mails in the process.
4 A note is stuck to your screen. It is from your manager asking to see you as soon as you return. It is not dated. Your meetings with your manager are usu-ally 30 minutes minimum.
5 A member of your team has seen you coming into the building and is sitting at your desk. As you approach, they ask if you have got 10 minutes.
6 One of the company directors has left a message with Pat saying that he would like to see you and could you telephone his secretary to make an appointment as soon as you return. Pat has left this message on your desk.
7 Pat’s telephone is ringing on a neighbouring desk; she has clearly forgotten to switch the voicemail on.
8 Because you rushed away from the training course just before lunch, you have not eaten. You are really hungry, but realize that it will take about 15 minutes
to go up to the dining room and eat a decent meal. There are no other facili-ties available.
Write down the order in which you would do these things, being sure to include all eight items.
For this exercise, just as for many others that you will meet during the selection process, there are no necessarily ‘right’ answers. However, there are certain things you should consider:
■ the time allocation for the different situations;
■ any prior knowledge you have about these situations;
■ which items might unsettle you if you don’t deal with them;
■ what the expectations of the other people involved might be;
■ which situations might lead to further complications that have the potential to tie you up for even longer.
There is no perfect response, but some of the following points are worth bearing in mind:
1 The situation with Lisa. Lisa is a valued member of the team and you only know that she has been offered a new job, not that she has accepted it. The time you are prepared to spend discussing this with her may have some influence on the decision she makes, as might your attitude to being able to give her time at the moment.
On the other hand, she might be planning to take the new job whatever and only wants to discuss it with you out of courtesy, so why make this a priority?
2 Voicemail messages. Presumably you set your voicemail to let people know you would be out all week, so if they wanted to con-tact you urgently, they should have found another means of getting through to you. Some voicemail messages can take a long time to deal with, especially if you have to write down details and contact numbers.
3 E-mail messages. E-mails have the advantage over telephone calls that you don’t have to engage with them if you don’t want to – you
can delete irrelevant ones and there is no need to copy down any information. There is always the chance that one of the e-mails will give you some clues about the other situations you are tackling.
4 Your manager. It is a good work practice and a natural instinct to know what your manager wants. However, in this situation, the manager probably knows you are away for the week and is not anticipating meeting with you until your return. The fact that the note is undated tends to suggest this, although it does not offer cer-tainty.
5 Your team member. It is difficult to turn away someone who is sit-ting by your desk, but on the other hand he is being a bit of an opportunist, who just happened to see you enter the building. Per-haps you could combine having lunch with a meeting with this team member, thus dealing with two items on the list at the same time and again creating a possible opportunity to pick up other information.
6 The director. The information you have been given tells you noth-ing about the size of the company – in a large company it is unlikely that the company director will be aware of your comings and goings. A quick telephone call to his PA will enable you to set a meeting at the time that suits you.
7 Pat’s ringing telephone. There is no reason why you should answer the telephone, but is it going to interrupt your other impor-tant work? Can you answer it and be brief with the caller and at least set the voicemail so that the rest of your hour is spent in peace?
8 Lunch. Lunch may seem a luxury amidst the rush, but will you be able to concentrate on your course or any other tasks in hand if you are distracted by hunger? Could you combine it with a meeting with your team member or a meeting with Lisa?
It is still up to you to choose the rank order. When groups of people do this exercise, invariably different rank orderings emerge. If the paper exercise is combined with a discussion, more than one working order can be logically explained and justified.