Group Situations
Listed are a few of the daily situations we experience. While these are hardly unique to us, or even to plural
groups (paying the bills is something we all do!), we are posting these here to provide some examples of how
we choose to tackle them, in case they might provide some ideas for other groups who are working on their
own strategies.
While we would like to keep this page updated,
time will only tell if we can.
Home Life
Bill Payments
Situation: Keeping the bills paid on time when some people swap entire days.
Current Solution: A concern that everyone has to deal with -- ours just happens
to be compounded by multiple people to remind. We have a schedule mapped out per month for
our billing cycles. We hinge them off certain easily-remembered dates (1st, 5th, 10th) so
that whenever someone is out that day and notices the date, they can pause and ask if the
bills were done. We also keep a paper copy of this schedule, and a whiteboard for when a bill has arrived
(in case it gets lost in the mail.) And last -- but not least -- we retain the paper copies of the bills with annotated
dates on them when they were paid, along with occasional verification online for bills that can be done electronically.
Anything that can be done with automatic deduction has been set up this way as well.
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Work Life
Relaying Memos
Situation: Making sure everyone has the information they need between shift changes.
Current Solution: We have a written schedule of tasks, based off our weekly department meetings. From there,
we sometimes plan out each day's tasks. This allows people to take a shift, look at the list, and understand what they need
to get done. It helps cut down on the number of times we've had people show up, not realize they had work expected
for that day, and instead spend it on other tasks. It also helps us with more flexibility, because anyone who can perform that
task can go ahead and do it, while also taking some time for themselves. We also schedule some things in Outlook as reminders,
and go through a large amount of post-it notes at our desk.
Specialists vs. Generalists
Situation: The people who are best at meetings aren't the ones actually doing the work.
Current Solution: This one mimics the plight of supervisors everywhere. Those of us who are better at attending meetings and writing explanatory emails
aren't the ones who are actually doing the task at hand. This adds an extra level of necessary communication, because
whenever someone is asked a question, they have to pause and ask the internal specialist. This, in turn, makes it more
difficult during tense meetings when people are waiting for our responses. Our best solution so far has been to help coach
people ahead of time if they know a concern that will be brought up, and to provide them with notes. We still remain
blindsided a few times on issues, which we have explained as needing to collect our thoughts to provide a fair assessment
and reply to the query.
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Other
Keeping the website updated
Situation: Keeping the website updated isn't something that our current staff has time for, or even thinks about.
Current Solution: We could try to assign a person whose job description includes updating the site. We could
also try a schedule similar to our bills, such as trying to update each month. However, our system is
also generally stable enough that we don't have many major changes to post about, and there is still some debate about
how posting any difficulties may give the wrong impression that we're dysfunctional. We do not have a good
solution for this issue yet.
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