January 1, 2007
"Okay class, settle down, settle down....you are all signed up for Keep Your Mouth Shut 101. I would like everyone to grab their notebooks, and take some....excuse me Jamie is it? Would you PLEASE stop talking and pay attention...you might learn something. Okay, class let's get started,as I was saying....."
Ya, this could be me in kindergarten, me in junior high, senior year high school, art class at college, or even a pampered chef party earlier this year. I talk, and I love to talk....and I talk a lot - oh, I know you are shocked.
So, I am trying to keep my mouth shut now....and let things just progress, or happen. Now don't get me wrong, if there is a tile emergency or a huge problem at work I won't just sit back and stick a fragile sticker on my mouth. But I am moving forward:
- No one in the office could find an order or I should say they could not or would not look for the corresponding paperwork to go with the order. I usually would have run a fire drill around the office searching for the order. I let them find it, and they did
- No one gave me an update on the work for next week. Being closed a week we still need to make our deadlines, and shipping starts again tomorrow. I waited and waited.....now I did have to go into the office today to get the work done, but I made them figure it out, you must communicate with the artists doing the tiles.
- A question from a channel regarding an order, again me running around looking for order sometimes only to find out channel never send the order to us....this time we got the call I had someone else do it - it's their job, and I did my job
- Processing orders was switched from binders to clip boards (don't know why, but it was). Now since I do not process, I did not say anything and everyone else loves the easy access to orders shipping, so I let it go
- We had a choice to ship products to Atlanta Gift show late and pay a large fee, or ship them over night to save on fees. I asked my accountant and let her go over the choices, the possibilities.....then let her come to the 'overnight choice' which was all we had at the time (and FedEx was able to give us a break on Express Shipping through end of 2006).
- A file name on our excel spread sheet (how we keep track of all orders for week) was wrong...but I did not do it, I am not processing. So when their was a complaint I waited, and told them I had not created the file, they would need to go to the person that did
Now, to you none of this probably sounds earth shattering or even remarkable...but it is. You see, uh what I was saying earlier...I love to talk and I also like to be right. To make the office run smoothly, I need to let others make mistakes, learn from their mistakes and figure things out on their own. I need to basically shut up. I used to be the 'Mommy' that came in and fixed everything, if they complained, cried (now wait that is me) or whined I helped them out When they left for the day I did their jobs....now I wait till they come back into the office.
I will step in when needed, and I would never let their work effect the experience my customer had with my company...but how many tile/gift emergencies do you think I get in any given week? Not many, not many. And if it does get escalated to me, I will jump in and fix it.
Which reminds me of a conversation my 4 year old and I just had. She asked for the 24th time if she could play on the computer (oh gosh they need to go back to school) and I said no, again. She then started whining, and I said, "Abby whining never works with me". Abby said, "....well, it does sometimes Mommy."
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