One day last fall I had a typical BA moment. I received a call, before I’d even had a sip of my morning coffee or opened my email, that came in with a sense of urgency. I was helping an organization interview BAs for a job opening. There was a job interview scheduled for about an hour from when the call came in, and it needed to be rescheduled. Job interviews, especially when you are dealing with a middle party like a recruiter, are never the easiest to schedule and I try my best to be flexible. 
And in the rush of opening my calendar, wishing I’d grabbed that cup of coffee and missed the call altogether, and trying to find a mutually agreeable time to reschedule the meeting, it then comes up that perhaps I missed a meeting yesterday, leaving me fretting about my own supposed oversights. (After carefully reviewing my emails, it turns out I did not miss a meeting.)
I make the accommodations in my schedule to reschedule the meeting (some I’m none too happy with) and head upstairs to get said coffee. Then I realize that I’ve done it again. I’ve let someone else’s sense of urgency get me fired up. Here I am barely awake, yet my heart is racing a little and my stomach has tightened. All because said intermediary made me feel like the world might just fall apart a little if we didn’t get our schedules in sync.
This has happened to me time and again throughout work. Has it ever happened to you? As BAs, I trust you are a good planner and are generally prepared. Sure you make mistakes, but you own them and own dealing with them. You don’t shove your problems on someone else. Your lack of planning is an emergency for you, not the other person. But do you also take on the fallout of others’ lack of planning? What does this do to your schedule, your commitments, and, well, your personal well-being?
I’d love to teach myself to stop in the moment and say no. No, this is not my problem. Or at least, no, this is not an urgent problem for me and I will not let it get me riled up. Although I will collect myself and help you work your way through it, because that’s the kind of helpful, supportive BA that I am.
How about you? Do you allow others’ lack of planning to send you off dealing with a new “emergency”? How do you handle this type of situation?
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By Laura Brandenburg. Laura Brandenburg is passionate about business analysis. She's found her niche helping aspiring business analysts find transferable skills and position themselves in the BA job market. To stay up-to-date on the latest from Bridging the Gap be sure to sign-up for our free email course and weekly eNewsletter. View more blog posts by Laura Brandenburg |
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post Laura! I run into this all the time as well! Sometimes I find that people just do not know they are doing this – this is the When Harry Met Sally situation – “you’re the worst kind, the person who thinks they are low maintenance, but you are really high maintenance!” I have run into that a lot in the few years. I find it can be a challenging conversation – telling someone that you have others items schedule and booked and can fit them in a few weeks! But you have to either do it – or stop working with those people (not possible for a lot of folks!)
I also find that sometimes people get too good at saying “no” (not often) – but a few situations lately I have had to think about the situation and ask – is this “emergency” more valuable to me that what I was working on!
I would recommend people read The One Minute Manager and the Monkey. A great book that I recommend in my training & coaching. It is a straightforward way to put things in perspective!
Thanks Jake! I have no doubt that the recruiter was unawares of his impact on me. Some people just thrive on urgency. Others just don’t stop to think about how their actions effect others. But really, it doesn’t matter. I can’t control other people I can only control myself, so it’s up to me to create the scenarios in which my stomach doesn’t turn.
What do you mean about some people saying “no” too often? Do you mean they’ve set up so many barriers on their schedule that they are inflexible? I’m definitely wary of that.
This situation is never quite black and white, but yes, I do allow it happen on purpose. You can’t say no all the time, and you can’t say yes all the time. You just have to balance your priorities and find your power of negotiation to work your conflicts out. What’s more important? Weigh out what can wait a bit longer and what cannot, push things around and make it happen, or not. Tell people who are expecting you to deliver that you’re going to be late, negotiate a new deadline. Face it, some things will always be left incomplete until later, but here’s the key, for things that are left incomplete, ask yourself, was it imperative to get it done at the scheduled time? Or could it wait a little longer while you make something else a priority that might be integral to the success of something else that is much larger than some other smaller priority task that doesn’t have as much of an impact? And yes, some things can usually wait. I wouldn’t beat myself up over it. Unexpected things come up, things change, and you should readjust to meet the demand. Trying to follow a strict schedule isn’t realistic.
This is a tough balancing act. I have a very reactive project manager who consistently believes that his emergencies take precedence over what I am doing. He pulls me out of meetings, interrupts conversations. Coupled with this is that he feels that I owe him for having my contract extended.
This relationship is not a positive one, and it does not give me any feelings of empowerment.
I do appreciate what he has done for me. Yes, his emergencies should take precedence sometimes – but not always. I look him in the eye, and let him know what I have that will be dealt with first and then I always work through his concern. The tightrope walk is necessary but when I start to feel stress over the situation, I breath, remove myself from the area and then sort through it.
I hate the feeling. I provide top-notch customer service to someone’s urgent request – then comes the realization that I jumped through hoops that someone else created due to poor planning. It’s always a frustrating feeling.
Frankly, this is a constant struggle for me as I am not one who thinks quickly on my feet. If a client asks me for help, my first response is to say, “of course.” As Anne said, it’s rarely black and white so I usually handle them on a case-by-case basis.
I think the outer edges of the spectrum are easy; you either have someone asking who rarely has an emergency (which is easy to say yes to) or you have someone who is a chronic offender. Ideally with the chronic offender, you recognize the pattern and set some healthy boundaries so that you can continue having a (somewhat) productive work relationship with them. It’s the middle part of the spectrum that provides me the most trouble.
Bottom line, I think it’s the nature of our work. I’ll quote the BA Manifesto: “Out of chaos, we create order. Out of disagreement, we create alignment. Out of ambiguity, we create clarity.” It’s a great way to capture what we do as BAs, but it also explains why folks who are in the middle of chaos & ambiguity will gravitate towards us.
Keeping those boundaries healthy is key! I would love to hear from others on how they balance their own priority list with other’s emergencies.