Episode 129 | Yes, Directors Have Statuses, Too
Question
Hey Work Wives, it's Naomi from Redmond, Washington. And I need some organizational help. I'm a director at a tech company, and I oversee multiple engineering teams. There's almost too many inputs. I'm getting tasked with work for my teams outside of our product management team's knowledge, or sometimes they assign a task directly to my team, but I've not heard they did. And I'm getting my boss, the CTO, coming to me with projects when it should go to the PM's team first. And even if it's only a technicality, you know, fine, but it still needs to be on our work tracking system, which they run. So as a result of this disorganization, I've found myself in multiple meetings with other directors and even some cross-functional VPs, not being able to articulate exactly what my team is working on, um, you know, what our priorities are, et cetera. And there's even some conversation about my team missing deadlines, but I can't find anywhere that it's documented that we even had a deadline to hit. So, you know, I'm super disheartened and I just really need your advice on how to handle all these stakeholders. Thank you so much in advance.
Summary
It may be hard to imagine your Director-level manager having weekly Status meetings with their VP-level or C-suite-level manager, but Directors need Statuses as much as you do, and theirs are even more complicated than yours.
Got a question for Ask Your Work Wife?
Record your question and email us the recording. Include your name, your city if you want, and whatever context might be helpful for us to know. And donβt forget to start with βHey, Work Wives!β
