Calendar Pandemonium

As an Administrative Professional, calendaring is part of the job.  However, some weeks are worse than others.

Yes, this was how my week looked.  All the pretty colors are enough to make me nauseous.  sigh.

My favorite request for the week?  Find time to meet with three business unit presidents, my boss and four directors by Friday.  I horse trade with the best of the best, even I couldn't pull that request off.  It got pushed to the following week.

I only have a finite amount of miracles I can grant.  Thank goodness it's Friday!

The Calendar Gods are in Alignment

There are times when calendaring can be a joy or the very circle of hell.  I'm pretty sure when Dante wrote of the 'ninth circle of hell' he was managing a number calenders simultaneously.

But every so often miracles appear and the universe aligns.  Calendars line up and a coveted time opens up.  I swear I can hear angelic choruses singing grand hallelujahs. 

My day is wonderful. I feel like a miracle worker.  What does the boss say?  'So?'

Ingrate.

Calendar Misfires

A professional calendar is just that - Professional.

More often than not, Admin Gal finds more and more of her colleagues using their work calendars to keep up with the events of their personal life.  As the administrator of more than a few of those calendars, Admin Gal does not want to see the following:

1. Nip and Tuck.
2. Pick up 'Sexy Stuff' for tonight.
3. Keep 'R' from knowing about 'S'.
4. ANYTHING to do with intimate performance.
5. Innumerable references to dinners, doctor appointments, dates, children's plays and other performances, etc.

All of these things belong on personal calendars. If they need to be on your professional calendar, by all things sane, create a code by which you can spare the Admin.  We already know to much about your lives.  

Seriously!

Calendar Mayhem

When you work for a large or small corporation, the calendar is an important tool to your day to day duties. It doesn't matter if you are an admin, a manager, or a CEO.

The one thing that will aggravate EVERYONE around you is when a calendar, which is the property of the company, is blocked from the rest of the company.  We're not talking about seeing the details.  Frankly, no one cares!

I'm talking about seeing the basic Free/Busy. Thereby allowing some basic planning for when, as a courtesy, you call the person to confirm the time is actually available.

When the CEO and the Chairman of the company allow their calendars to show Free/Busy, it is poor form on an individual's part to think themselves more important than the people who allow them to have a job.

Free/Busy won't kill you, but not seeing your calendar might make important people wonder what you are hiding.

Chain of Command

Admin Gal has noticed that as people climb the corporate ladder, the rarefied air can sometimes go to people's head.  As the titles of Managers, District Managers, Director etc. start getting attached to names,  individuals can forget that they still must report to someone.

Frankly?  When your boss says a meeting must take place, you shouldn't push back.  You should say - Yes, sir/ma'am!  Just because you sit in a management position, doesn't mean you don't have a chain of command you fall into.

When you say 'NO' to your boss enough times.  Your boss will say 'No, we don't need you working here anymore.'

I Get It!

Managers make changes to calendars because they think, we the Admins, are bored!  Why else would they change a 20 person meeting with less than 2 hours notice that involves 3 executives and other busy people.   We need the adrenaline rush that comes with the reschedule.

NOT!

Really? Aside from death, dismemberment and illness, there are very few excuses that justify the reschedule of a meeting with such short notice.

Being the professional I am, I slap a smile on my face and perform miracles.

'C' is for the Crazy of the Calendar

Admin Gal started her job, not referring to herself in the third person.  She started as a nice, normal woman who had dreams and aspirations of world domination.

No where in her mind did she ever think she would get to know that the 'C' in Calendar really stood for ding-a-doodle Crazy.

Admin Gal can only do so much in the tersely worded instructional emails left in the dead of night, to engineer some miraculous meeting, over multiple continents, languages and, sometimes she thinks, species.

If the email says 'As soon as schedules permit...', she can only assume that is the intent of the message and plan accordingly. Any hidden subtext is just that...HIDDEN.

Calling Admin Gal, after the invitation has been sent to the appropriate parties, in a kerfuffle, saying that the meeting must take place as soon as humanly possible (in direct contradiction to your email), expect a polite freeze from your ever efficient Admin.

For Admin Gal does Crazy, but she doesn't do brain farts.

Summer Madness

A good Admin tracks calendars, meetings and the occasional UFO through out the course of her duties. During the summer months the added stress of tracking the dates of the executives vacation schedules can be enough to send one around the bend.

The purpose of a good calendar system is to use it to block out vacation days. Not to let everyone guess where you might be when you disappear. On top of that people feel it necessary to guard the contents of their calendars like they are national secrets, privy only to the President himself. REALLY?

Look, I don’t care if you are having lunch with the Dali Lama or your girlfriend. If the boss is asking where you are and I can see if you are on vacation or in a meeting there are problems.
Do me a favor, as your Admin and let me when you are out of the office.

Meeting Hierarchy

As an admin, I find myself juggling calendars to arrange meetings of varying importance.  When arranging them, I have to take into account the attendees and their rank within the corporation.  I support a CIO, president of a business unit, a couple of Vice Presidents and various Directors.  Often my meeting notices include managers and other people whose presences are required but whose schedules are in conflict with my executives.

So here is a lesson to be learned.  When in the hierarchy of the business world, if your boss tells you that you are required to attend a meeting and the only time HE or SHE can hold it (according to their schedule) is at a specific time that does not jibe with your schedule -- you need to be there.  So please don't call me, telling me to reschedule a meeting that has people who rank higher than you in the company.  You won't win.

In the grand scheme of things, you need to move your schedule to accommodate their schedule.  As an admin, I have done everything in my power to find a time that will work for everyone.  Failing that, the executives schedule win every time.

Oh, the Humanity!

There are some day you just can’t when in the game of calendaring.  Seriously.  If it isn’t vacation for one person, it’s an anniversary for another, OR maybe it’s that obscure hop-scotch pebble throwing day only celebrated every 4th year on a full moon when there is a Chinese-American President in Office.

Really?  When an admin is trying to wrangle 20+ people together for an executive that isn’t even one I regularly support and all I get is grief.  Well, the gloves come off!

Here are the rules of the road!

1. Take what you get! If meeting making were as easy as they thought they would have done it themselves.
2. Meeting times only change if the meeting presenters actually haven’t kept their calendars up to date.  Then that is a whole other conversation.
3. Food?  You want to be feed?  You let me know 15 minutes before the meeting your want food?  That falls under the category of miracles and really, really good bribes.
4. If said meeting people make the admin mad, the admin will stop managing the calendar and their world will collapse in a chaotic sea of, well you get the picture.

I’m not saying I’m unwilling to help.  But, usually there is a reason that the meeting got put in the initial time-slot or moved to the next.

Just be grateful it’s actually on your calendar at all!

Calendaring Conundrums

A certain madness is evident when maintaining a calendar for an executive.  When that duty mushrooms into multiple dynamic calendars, well, insanity is the next level of mental acuity.

I only state this obvious, need for a flexible state of mind because of the host of reschedules that happen on any of the given calendars we manage.  If we the admin lose track of the delicate thread that binds all the calendars together, it is even easier for those whose calendars we manage to become unraveled.

For example, I moved a meeting that affected the leadership team.  This meeting was not of pressing urgency as it was a month out on the schedules.  Every last one of the leadership team called me to verify that the meeting would indeed not be taking place tomorrow.

Honestly, the reschedule date is in the subject line. Sigh.

RESPECT THE MEETING NOTICE!

MEETING - an assembly or conference of persons for a specific purpose or event.

There is nothing more frustrating than having set up a meeting 45 days ago, then finding out the day of the meeting that two of the principle players couldn’t be bothered to participate.  They accepted, but never chose to change their status so that alternative arrangements could be made.

This particular meeting had already been rescheduled 4 times.  All participants tell me it is imperative to have said meeting.  My boss, who was at the right time at the right place, was made to look bad.  Which in turn made me feel crappy.

I get it, plans change.  People get busy.

For Pete Sakes! Check your calendar and be courteous.  Decline the meeting if you aren’t coming.

Experiments in Software

Like all companies, in these hard economic times, mine is on the look out for the best deal on anything.  Recently we started taking a hard look at our email delivery system.  We currently use a system that is so half-a#$$ed backwards that no reputable hacker would want to be known for hacking it.  I break the email system on a regular basis. I'm not doing anything special.  Just using it.  But then I am an Admin...
I'm on a first name basis with the third-tier tech support for this software.  In fact, when my name comes up I'm pretty sure the conversation goes like this:

Expert #1: OH NO! It's HER!  I'm not picking up the phone!

Expert #2: I took her call last time. It's YOUR turn!

(Picture me on hold, tapping my fingers on my desk!)

The argument continues, fisticuffs erupt. 

FINALLY! Someone picks up the line.

Expert #3:  (who had to break up the fight, answers breathlessly) Hello XXXX, how can we help you today?

But I digress.  We are currently in the beginning of a email pilot.  I and an intrepid group of Executive Admins have been carefully selected to push this system to its limits and beyond.  I've spent the last week in training.  I'm bleeding Blue, Red, Orange, Blue, Green, and Red.
The pilot hasn't even started AND, I've already broken the calendar.  The next thirty days are going to be fun!

Calendaring

Calendar: A list or schedule of planned events or activities giving dates and details.

An Administrative Professional: Person who creates and maintains said calendar in a timely and efficient manner.

Executives:  The Spanner in the Works!