You clarify what you are going to do, often in consultation with peers and superiors. There are many successful organizations which offer opportunities for people to do work that is important to them, or rely on people to engage with the work which needs to be done, regardless of role or job description. It’s sometimes covered as “other duties as assigned” in job descriptions. Of course, there are organizations which are dysfunctional too. In either case, you ned to maintain a situational awareness of what is going on around you, and maintain clarity about what your contributions are.I would like to see your input, how would you action the next challenge?
How to inbox Zero when you are part of an email distribution list with multiple people that have different roles and no clear job descriptions?
I think the problem is bigger than this inbox zero goal. I do not your position, role, or the size/structure of the organization but to me there are a few projects here:Hello GTD members,
I would like to see your input, how would you action the next challenge?
How to inbox Zero when you are part of an email distribution list with multiple people that have different roles and no clear job descriptions?
Best regards,
Erik
Unless something is rather trivial, it goes into my calendar, my lists and/or my reference system. However, clarity is something I never maintain across all aspects of my life; it’s something I work toward every day.Dear Mcogilvie,
Thank you for you feedback, how do you maintain clarity about all your contributions? Do they live inside your GTD system ?
Yep, that's all pretty much what I assumed. I'm unclear on why my suggestions wouldn't fit in that scenario?Dear Gardener,
Thank you for your feedback.
To make things more clear, I work myself with todoist..
I also import clarified emails and messages from the microsoft workspace into todoist.
But the problem is we work with multiple teams to deliver 24/7 occupation.
The superiors only work during the week from monday to friday and don't really assign people to certain tasks.
They only interact when urgent stuff needs to be solved by the team that is on duty (to clear their own deck) .
Also they will send email to the distribution group when orders are due and need attention, not assigning staff to actually execute this.
Inside the teams we have multiple roles (I am a technician) that are not clearly defined (no concrete boundries) by superiors and management.
Most of the time we have low occupation resulting in doing work from the other roles to keep things running.
This effect means I need to keep a situational awareness of what is going on across all roles, thats why I have to clarify all email from the distribution group so I don't miss anything.
Previously I tried to manage this with a "waiting_for_team" list, but I was not able to manage this list during my work hours.
So the result of not able to manage all this information is keeping allot of this inside my head instead of externalizing this into my GTD system.
This sounds like a really tough environment. Is it a young company, a small company?Dear ivanjay205,
Thank you so much for your detailed reply.
Project 1: If I ask superiors for more clearity in the job descriptions: they say that we need to be more flexible and sort it out in the team.
They put the responsibilities back on the staff, because they have no sense of what work looks like.
Project 2: Because of open vacancies / colleques without the correct training, allot of times I execute work outside my role to keep the process going. When I discuss this with my superiors they say they are working on it. No extra reward possible for this...
Project 3: I can try to discuss this first with my colleaques, maybe it is possible that every role gets his own distribution list.
But when I previously discussed this with senior staff and superiors they said that it would be to complicated for other departments to reach out to us.
We previously even had a new colleaque that left the company because there was no clearity where he was responsible for.
The management / human resources said: take it or leave it.
" Outline some process about how to use the shared box or distribution group. If it is truly a distribution group everyone gets a copy. Why? If you dont need it can you simply delete or do you need to ensure someone handles it?"
I don't need to asure someone handles it because I am not a superior. When I clarify email from the distribution group and decide I am not going to do it, automatically I defere it in silence because the task or problem is still there. When you follow the GTD workflow it means that I am waiting for "someone else" to handle the task. This item will live inside your waiting for list untill it is completed. But because of the volume of email this list soon becomes overwelming and stopped with this. At this moment I only put things inside my waiting for list that I am waiting for myself. Things like "waiting for superior to approve travel expenses. ", "waiting for supplies from department X", "Waiting for company X to execute the work for the ticket I made" ec.
If I delete or archive an item above I will still think unconscious about it.
Things I will think of randomly: "Did someone already take a look at X?", "Is order X executed?", "Did someone already reply on X?"
Looking forward for some more feedback.
Best Regards,
Darkdepth
Hello GTD members,
I would like to see your input, how would you action the next challenge?
How to inbox Zero when you are part of an email distribution list with multiple people that have different roles and no clear job descriptions?
Best regards,
Darkdepth
"As to GTD if it didnt pertain to you simply delete it."
Sounds like a good plan to me, but how do I cope with colleagues that will say "didn't you receive email x about x yesterday, why you didn't do anything about this..."?
It sounds like you are CC's on a lot of items that you do not necessarily have to take action on. I created a folder called CConly and created an Outlook rule that, with the exception of emails from certain senders, any email in which my name does not appear in the TO line, they flow to this folder. I then can more easily concentrate on my IN box and read the emails in my CC folder once a day.Hello GTD members,
I would like to see your input, how would you action the next challenge?
How to inbox Zero when you are part of an email distribution list with multiple people that have different roles and no clear job descriptions?
Best regards,
Darkdepth
@darkdepth Two possible answers:"As to GTD if it didnt pertain to you simply delete it."
Sounds like a good plan to me, but how do I cope with colleagues that will say "didn't you receive email x about x yesterday, why you didn't do anything about this..."?
Hello Ivanjay205,Another trick is I used to forward my emails often into my omnifocus inbox. What I learned that was essentially double processing it. I would move the email, and have to remind myself what it is and clarify later. Now, I try to clarify right out of my inbox. It slows down my inbox processing but it greatly speeds up clarifying and prevents double processing on my end