Where does time go?

I chose to share the topic Work Life Balance yesterday because it is something we highly value in the Q&CS team and it is a very important topic for me. Today however was a very chaotic day when I did not feel balanced at all. Those days happens too. But I can live with it because I know that I will find ways to gain back the balance another time.  

Most of the time I feel I have everything under control, even though I have a lot of things on the "waiting to do" list. That is also what I like so much about this job. The "organized chaos"! That I am never bored because things, high & low, pops up at all times from everywhere.

When I came in to the office this morning I had to put my Lync messenger on "Do not disturb". Only three persons can get through that, my boss, our EVP assistant and the Q&CS Strategy manager. I rarely use it but sometime I just need to get focused for a specific delivery.

I mentioned briefly yesterday that we are in the middle of a re-organization within Q&CS. A bigger re-organization within the Volvo Group earlier on led to a decision to do a re-organization within Q&CS that meant becoming a much larger organization than we were before. Today a large part of the new organization was to be announced on our intranet and it is my responsibility to publish the content. My main focus today was to get that done directly in the morning, then take care of some other things followed by a short lunch before a two hour long meeting would start at 12:00. This is how it went:

 

1) Took a glance at my mailbox and realized I received around 60 mail during Monday (acceptance/declines of meetings excluded). I only handled the most urgent once yesterday since I needed to focus on other things.

2) Scanned my manager´s calendar and noted there was one person based in India that I needed to contact to confirm something, I found him on a chat and cleared out what I needed.

3) Started processing the announcement which quickly showed to be more tricky than usual since there is a special process for announcing more people than one in the same news.

4) Went into a preparation meeting for a Townhall (large meeting) that my manager will be holding next week in Lyon, I only stayed partially to discuss some practical issues and then left our Communication manager and the French manager alone to discuss the content.

5) Took a quick chat with the French manager about something that came up during the Townhall prep meeting.

6) Had a quick Lync chat with my manager (he sits in a room on another floor and is almost 100% occupied with meetings even though he has a desk next to me in the landscape).

7) My manager gave me two meetings to reschedule and three new. Very easily scheduled 1:1 meetings.

8) I continued the announcement, all the pictures needed to be edited a bit.

9) A colleague came by my desk to discuss something.

10) I realized I needed to pass a meeting with the Change Management team where I am involved with regards to our re-organization. I needed to get ready with the announcement. I e-mailed the organizer some input for the meeting and declined.

11) Had a quick chat through the Lync messenger with a French colleague (initiated through me since I was on "do not disturb", remember?)

12) Sent a quick mail about something else important around the Townhall in Lyon, a thought generated through the previous chat.

13) Continued the announcement.

14) A colleague came to my desk to discuss something.

15) Continued the announcement but realized I needed support.

16) Tried to get support through chat & phone call.

17) My boss called to tell me something.

18) As I was waiting intranet support I started to quickly finalize the material for the 12:00 meeting where I still had updates to do on my part.

19) I got intranet support and managed to publish the announcement before lunch, it took much longer than expected as I run in to unforeseen issues.

20) I had no time for lunch but ate my salad at my desk as I finalized the last part on the material for 12:00.

 

The 12:00 meeting was our Quarterly Performance review meeting where all members from the Q&CS management team connects to jointly review our performance. I am responsible for follow up so that our organization are on target with their actions generated from the 2014 Volvo Group Attitude Survey (briefly mentioned yesterday with regards to the worklife balance).

Today I will stay late in the office. I really need to structure those 50 post-it notes with quick actions noted down on the run since yesterday. I have also made a "to do" list that contains rather many urgent issues. We have a Quarterly Review meeting coming up week 23 where the global Q&CS management team meets in Gothenburg from Monday lunch to Friday lunch. I am coordinating the agenda for that and after having done the big puzzle it is time to make sure the team gets preparation information timely, secure practicalities and ofcourse confirming all logistics around it. We are also having a Townhall meeting that week for our around 100 employees followed by an open house that I am organizing. The idea is that the different functions are going to be represented and colleagues are going to mingle and get to know eachother. I have the concept since we tried it out in Lyon earlier this year. But I haven´t been able to start structuring it so much until today since I needed to wait for the announcements of our new organization. The week after we have a manager Kick Of which is a Change Management initiative and a result of the re-organization we are in the middle of. My part is to support with practicalities. Those are the big things. Let´s see what I have to share tomorrow after I have structured my mailbox, the 50 post-it´s on my desk (I would have shared a picture but we are not allowed to photograph in our office), and all the "to do" notes I have still to action from recent meetings. Never a boring second ;-)