A GTD’er wrote to David Allen asking:
I am part of the senior management in a company and am responsible for a particular department. With many changes happening in the company such as growth and expansion, in a very short span of time, things happen ad hoc and lot of time gets spent in miscellaneous activities. This ad hoc confusion de-motivates me and does not give me a purpose to work in the interest of the company, as a lot of this work is thankless in nature. Hence, how should I address this? Should I ask my CEO for direction and let him know about things not being interesting or do I have to motivate myself to drive and take charge of the situation and take the growth process ahead? What is your suggestion?
David replied:
You have asked a very good question, but one that I can only feed back options. Much depends on the bigger questions about what’s important to you and where you’re going. If your long-term goal is clear enough, it should give you criteria for determining whether putting up with the discomfort in the short term is worth it in the long term. On the other hand, if it’s really important to you to be inspired and enthused by your work, then it’s not worth tolerating anything less for very long. In any case, it’s not a bad idea to have an open and honest relationship with key people in your life, e.g. your boss, about such matters.
Often in times of organizational change it will be necessary to re-examine your own direction, and particularly the desired outcomes for the responsibilities you now have in your job, and often that’s going to require frequent updates from your boss and others in the environment. Maybe the best thing to do is to make sure you get as much data as you can about the current situation… sometimes it’s just a matter of getting a better grip on “current reality” so you can know where you stand in relation to some of the other questions.
I know these may just raise more questions than they answer, but those are the things I would be talking to myself about, if I were in your shoes.
Hope that helps,
David
I’ll bet your CEO would prefer you found solutions rather than problems, took the initiative, and proposed ways of dealing with the ad hoc problems of rapid expansion. Due praise to David notwithstanding, it doesn’t seem wise to tell your boss too much about your inner thoughts, that you aren’t motivated to do the work she or he expects. Instead, if you can address your ennui by fixing the organization, you can emerge from this a hero.