Seven Days In

Let’s take a look at some of the tips and tasks that I’ve already run into in my first six days on the job.

#11 Assess the mess & #12 Deal with the mess
In the first few days, I toured the communications archives of the organization – the piles of leftover flyers and handouts, the folders full of media clips, the server storing hundreds of photos, documents, and various graphics. There was some semblance of organization to it all, but for the new guy coming in, it was a labyrinth to me. Apparently it had grown through accretion over the years. People knew where to find things for their particular needs (a flyer for my meeting, a photo for my PowerPoint), but there was no overall system.

To some extent, this mess feels paralyzing. All these documents, photos, clips, and materials have to be sorted out and organized (and culled!) before I can make any decisions about what materials to make next. But the mess (or messes) will take some serious man-hours to pull apart and re-sort. It feels like a difficult trade-off between going through these archives (looking backwards) and getting projects done today (moving forward). Anybody know a good intern?

#13 Take care of my boss’s pet peeves
My boss is a stickler about photos. All pictures of our work have to show the right angle, the best light, and the critical details. Editing must be done carefully and precisely. Fortunately, several staff clued me in to my boss’s focus on photos so I was well prepared when putting together a small magazine advertisement yesterday.

#15 Find out what your coworkers think your job is
This organization has had two marketing managers in the past but this is the first time they have had a full-blown communications director. While I’m sure that most have them were told that my job will be different from the past, a few people have fallen back into referring to my position as the marketing person” or “marketing director.” I’ve refrained from correcting them (because it would have sounded peevish) but in the near future I should do a brown-bag lunch and present the full gamut of my work. I’ll need my coworkers to support my efforts so they have to see the whole picture.

#18 Review the organization’s 12-month calendar
The calendar of events for this organization, like much of the organizational info, is walking around inside the heads of the directors and staff. So far, they only way I have found out what is going on is through informal conversations with staff at all levels. To keep on top of the calendar, it would be nice to create some system for centralizing this information. But the key players have been doing it this way for years, so I’ll have to work with them for a while.