Seven Steps to Success

Throughout my life I have been in many situations where the communication has been misinterpreted. Times when I have told someone to do something for me and it doesn’t get done right or on time. Looking back on the situations, it would have been very helpful to have had steps for someone to follow so that the work got done right and on time. At work during the week, I have specific duties I am responsible for getting done. Then when the weekend comes, I am responsible for leaving work for the weekend receptionist. Although I leave her plenty of work to be done, I don’t know if she doesn’t understand my directions or she just doesn’t want to complete the work. I think one of the problems is lack of specific purpose, maybe if I specially write out and explain to her what needs to be done, she will understand the work better. I think that sometimes I actually forget who my audience actually is, I forget that she only does work weekends and is not as experienced as I am. Maybe if I took into consideration that she is less experienced and wrote out more thorough directions, she would be able to better complete the work. I think that if I thought of the larger context and put myself in her shoes, or thought back to when I didn’t know anything I would be able to put a better plan out for her to complete. Another important step is to have a better way of communicating with her. I think that instead of just leaving a post-it note of what to do, maybe email here with a more detailed plan, or even make a notebook with a detailed directions plan. I think a good medium I could use, to help her would be to do examples of the paperwork and leave them in a book for her to look off of and compare to. So far I have not left any mediums for her, and visuals always helped me when I first started working here and doing the paperwork. Most likely I will arrange the notebook with the work I give the most often to the work that rarely will show up on the weekends. After I arrange the notebook and wait a few weeks so that she will have some time to use the notebook, and try it with different assignments, I will call her at work to see how it is working out for her. Also I would check to see if it was easy to follow and if she felt there was any changes that she needed done. Making a directions notebook usually is the best way to get a point across and make it easier to follow. I feel that this notebook would be very successful, also that the seven steps have made it easier to make up a plan that should work.