January 10, 2006

Over the course of my career, I’ve learned to manage my reactions, handle high-level stress, and focus on the task at hand. I’ve mastered my Just-in-Time delivery of my work, juggling my deadlines with my Management Team responsibilities. During my commute, I contemplate business challenges in channel management, Client Services, and Sales.

Once I’m in the office, I work with my Marketing Manager, talk with my Management Team peers, and then find time to do my own work. This week I’m generating Sales and Marketing tools for a Sales Training. While I feel low-level stress, I can’t let it show to my CEO, Manager, or other peers. We’re all stressed for different reasons. Sometimes when you let stress show, it’s contagious. I need to be calm for my Marketing and CEO, so they have confidence that every detail will go as planned.

Cross-Functional Sales Training

With so much going on in my mind, I just want to survive this week. During the week of Christmas, I counted on my CEO to defer the Sales training until we hired a third Sales person. It made sense to wait, but then during the first week of January, he decided to move forward with the training before hiring a new person. The attendees will include the two existing Sales people, two new Client Service people, one new Marketing person, CEO, Marketing Manager, and me. Our CTO and his Sales engineer will be in and out of the training.

Planning on Dependencies

I’m extremely tired after returning from Manhattan on separate business. I have 38 deliverables due by Thursday for the training. Fortunately, I have 73% complete, but have dependencies on our CTO. I can’t finish my documents until he clarifies what he’s really committing to for the next product release, which is the whole point of the training. My CEO wants me to train the Sales team on the next product release, so they can start pre-selling. I’m not concerned about my productivity because I know that our CTO is moving as fast as he can too.

I still have some major deliverables due. Yesterday, I finished the some minor documents, but managed to get one Sales demo script completed. I have another major Sales demo script scheduled for today. I’ll also have to finalize the Sales presentation to pitch to CEO for his review. My CEO shall use this presentation on Thursday for a real prospect sales presentation. Fortunately, he’s been so busy with his own stuff that he’s left me alone to do mine.

Wearing Many Hats, Using Just-in-Time Delivery

Meanwhile, I have a Board report to prepare for December and I have a new employee starting. I’m also thinking about issues that need addressing, like how we can build our next major release. Can we support our new clients? Who will manage our channel partners? Will Marketing’s workload become manageable now that we have another body?

I’m relieved that I’ve learned how to move in and out of my different roles and deliverables by mastering a just-in-time delivery work approach. I’ve learned not to stress over current business issues or my own deliverables. I focus on what’s due first, and then move onto the next priority. It’s like bailing out a leaky boat; you just keep bailing, bucket by bucket, until most of the water’s out of the boat.

The Smart Lemming Diary is a series that chronicles a journey of laid-off worker, who becomes a Vice President of Sales Operations & Marketing for a small entrepreneurial healthcare technology company. For previous entries in this series, click here. For the first diary entry, click here. For the highlighted Smart Lemming Diary entries, click here.

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