CYA On Steroids

When things get insane, multiple jobs become that of one person, and the stress level is through the roof people get into major Defense mode.  Blame gets places, accusations intensify, and covering your ass is mandatory.  It is the extreme sense of survival of the fittest in the work place.  I have received more emails in the last couple of weeks on ideas to combat the CYA need and so I figured I would throw out a couple of the ideas we came up with to the rest of you.  Just in case.

My favorite "on the go" system is using the Circa PDA notebooks from Levenger.  (They really need to start sending me free shit for as much as I talk about their products!)  Essentially, you write down everything you do, everything that has an action associated with it, or anything that you need to remember or retain to Cover Your Ass.  

Cindy is an Admin and she has been in major combative mode for the last couple of months.  She is almost ready to start wearing body armor to work it's getting so bad.  She is also picking up the slack for 4 other employees who were let go recently, so she is beyond finding any reasonable sense of sanity. So we came up

 with a little system that would help her remember what in the world is going on around her, the tasks she needs to do by account, and some other stupid CYA's she feels she needs to do to keep afloat. 

Typically I would recommend that she use Outlook to do a lot of this, but she isn't too trusting of her computer and she doesn't have Outlook.  Everything is done on a home grown web mail account.  (Can you just say, YUCK!?)  So we went back to the good ol' basics of paper.

The PDA Circa consists of these wonderful 3x5 cards that I love so much.  The rings make it easy to move the cards around and organize them which is wonderful.  

Anytime anyone told her to do something, an email came through with an action item or she received one duri

ng a meeting.  I had her write it down on her 3x5 card.

At the top, she would label it by account, meeting or person it was associ

ated with.  

In the notes section, she would write down the action item itself.  

On the bottom of the card, I had her put the date that it was assigned and reference whether it was an email, action item, phone call, voicemail, verbal.  This helped jog her memory of the where and when.

On the back is where she would list the follow up or additional actions required of the main item.

Example:  An email came through from her boss asking her to do new pricing for a new client.  Once the pricing was finished he wanted her to send it to him to review, send it to the client, update the master price list and send it to the rest of the team.

Her 3x5 Card

 would look something like this:

On the front she has the company name and the actual task.  You will notice at the bottom she has the date and an (E) for email.  The arrow is telling her that she wrote on the back of the card.  

 

On the back is where she put the actual notes.  She wrote when she sent the pricing to Bob to review with the date!  Then she put the other tasks associated with the main To Do.  Once completed, she can then put the completion date on the front of the card.

  

Since we are doing a CYA, these cards do not get thrown away!  Instead, they get filed in her actual PDA organizer or in a 3x5 card box designed specifically for completed items.  This way she has all of the back up she needs just in case someone accuses her of NOT doing an item.  She will know who she is waiting for, when it was done, and all of the other goodies.  Having to account for everything you do is never fun and it's terrible when we get to the point where we HAVE to do it, but it doesn't mean it can't be effective, fun, and pretty!  :)

Personally, I'm buying the red PDA Circa notebook, because Lord only knows my memory isn't what it used to be and I need saving from myself!  :)

Until next time,

Happy Organizing!