I just got promoted and now my role is all over the place. I don’t think my manager knows what the priorities are. How do I keep my career on track? – Graphic Designer
First of all, congratulations on your promotion! Before jumping into what’s wrong, take some time to savor what’s working. You’re clearly doing something right to merit a promotion.
That said, you may not feel like celebrating if you’re too busy playing whack-a-mole on the job. If your manager isn’t helping you prioritize, you’re going to have to streamline your own work. Be proactive about getting clarity in your role, communicating boundaries and setting expectations. This can help you mitigate, if not outright avoid, getting overwhelmed by competing priorities.
Here are 5 ways to prioritize your work when your manager is disorganized:
1. Do What You Think Your Manager Cares About
As this graphic designer notes, the challenge of working with an unfocused leader is that their role is all over the place. From day to day (or intraday if they’re really a mess), your asked to change focus, which makes your work inefficient. Your deadlines also change frequently, which likely means you put in overtime because you couldn’t plan appropriately.
Ideally, you manage upward communication with your manager through weekly planning meetings and reporting results. These check-ins may be unscheduled to your disorganized manager, but you must be the proactive one to catch them in their office or grab time on their calendar. Regular upward communication from you leads to clear expectations about what you should be working on. Keep communicating what you’re working on, including existing deadlines, and keep a paper trail, so that you establish how much work you’re doing despite managerial challenges.
Absent clear direction from your manager, watch what they work on and listen to the issues they talk about. Then, focus your work on these items. Your manager may not be able to articulate what their priorities are, but you may be able to observe them.
2. Anticipate What The Company Needs
If your manager is not strategic and all over the place with their own work, you’re going to have to set a vision for your work. Anticipate what the company needs, and stay focused on these long-term goals. When your manager assigns too many things, spend your time and energy on what impacts the company. Do the bare minimum on everything else when prioritizing feels impossible.
3. Focus On What Will Benefit Your Career
Making your manager look good, and doing right by the company will benefit your career in the long-run. In addition, there may be specific skills you’re looking to develop or projects or clients you want in your portfolio. In that case, use your work for professional development and focus your efforts on developing needed skills. Ask your manager for the projects or clients you want since you can’t assume they’ll be organized enough to map out a career path for you.
It’s always helpful to have friends in HR and allies in other parts of the company. In a chaotic situation, you need this support system even more. Your friend in HR can help you with your long-term career strategy, when your manager won’t. Mentors and lateral relationships can keep you apprised of how the company is doing, what the strategic priorities are, and what opportunities might be out there for you – all information you could get from your manager but likely won’t when they’re disorganized.
4. Do What You Love
If your manager gives you a laundry list of items to do, focus on the ones that make you light up. Absent a strategic directive, your passions and interests give you a compass for what to work on. Remember why you joined this company or picked this career path, and make sure that you include tasks, projects and clients that align with the reasons you’re doing this work in the first place. Your manager may return with a new laundry list sooner than later, so at least you will have spent time doing what you love.
5. Apply All The Above Depending On Business Conditions
Ideally, your prioritization process accounts for a combination of the above strategies. As you look at your overall To Do list, set aside time for things you love doing, things you know will benefit your overall career, things the company needs (you want to remain indispensable) and things your manager cares about because when they win, you win. If you use Excel to manage your task list, you can add a column that tags each of your activities with the strategy it follows. This way, you can make sure you’re using a balanced prioritization process.
Maintain some flexibility on what you work on based on business conditions. If your manager is pushing to hit year-end targets for your group, that may take up the bulk of your time since there is a clear directive and deadline. If the company has announced a specific strategic pivot, and you are not yet involved in anything related to that, getting a relevant project or client in this area could reasonably become a first priority. If you’re negotiating a raise or in performance bonus review season, focusing on tasks with bottom line impact make sense based on the timing.
Whatever Strategies You Use To Survive A Disorganized Manager, Know That You’re Building Critical Skills
This situation may be frustrating, even maddening, but you’re developing your own time management approach, strategic thinking and prioritization skills. You’re improving upward communication as you work with your manager on this – and develop relationships with other senior leaders for mentorship and support! You’re increasing your resilience to bounce back in spite of whatever your manager throws at you.