Check your bags

Make sure you have what you need to do your best work

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the New Corner Office,
the podcast where we share strategies for thriving in the
new world of work, where location and ours are more
flexible than in the past. Today's tip is to check
your bags. Now, I'm not talking about checking bags at

(00:26):
an airport. I'm actually a big fan of going carry
on only. What I mean is to examine what's in
your bags metaphorically speaking, make sure you have everything you
need before. It can be harder to get what you need.
In this pandemic era, lots of people have started doing

(00:46):
curbside pickup for groceries. Lots of people have also learned
the hard way that it can be helpful to check
your bags at the grocery store when you do curbside pickup,
to make sure you have everything you need. If your
bags happen to be missing the rotisserie chicken you were
planning to serve for dinner tonight, well you want to
know that before you get home and need to get

(01:06):
dinner on the table. If the whole reason you went
to the grocery store was that you had a hankering
for diet coke, you may be disappointed if you get
home and find that they gave you diet pepsi, even
if the rest of your order is correct, So check
your bags. This is a useful concept for other things too,

(01:27):
particularly if you are working from home where it might
be harder to get ahold of colleagues, and as people
go into offline mode over the holidays. I'm sure many
people listening to this have had the experience of seeing
that a colleague responded to our request. You assume that
when you open that email you will have the information

(01:48):
necessary for let's say the report you plan to write
in late afternoon, But come late afternoon, you open the
email and see that your colleague has actually asked for
a clarification what you wanted, or perhaps the attachment doesn't
open or it's the wrong one. Then, unfortunately, your colleague

(02:08):
doesn't respond to your emails, texts, phone calls. For all
you know, he's off for the night, or if this
is around the holidays, he may be off for days. Now.
This is incredibly frustrating for everyone, particularly since nobody actually
did anything wrong. So if you are working on a
collaborative project, when someone passes the baton to you after

(02:31):
doing their part, make sure you have what you need
to do your part. In other words, check your bags.
If there's something that seems missing, or if there's a
file you can't open, or if you have any questions
about what your part entails, immediately reach out to troubleshoot
or get clarification. You don't want your colleague to sign

(02:51):
off for the day for the week until you're equipped
to do the next steps in your project. Now. I
am not saying that you need to be on email constantly,
but if there is something you are expecting and that
you need listed as a priority for the day, to
look at it earlier rather than later. If you see
that your colleague responded in the morning, look at that

(03:13):
note at your mid morning email break, rather than assuming
you can wait until four thirty pm, let's say when
you plan to start. If your colleague planned to stop
work at five pm, he is not going to be
happy about your four thirty pm questions if he even
sees them. So both of you need to look out
for each other. If you check your bags and everything

(03:35):
looks good, it can still be a good idea to
reflect back what you received and what you plan to do,
so that if there is anything the sender intended to
communicate but missed. They'll realize it and set it right.
He might write, thanks, Toby, I received the comments in
your email. I will incorporate your suggestions and then send
a revised draft to the whole team on Monday. Now,

(03:57):
if Toby actually wanted to review your revision before you
sent it to the whole team, he can write back
and say so. Otherwise, your message ensures that you and
he are in sync. You know that you have what
you need to do your part. You know that the
rotisserie chicken made it into the bag. In the meantime,

(04:19):
this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's the succeeding
in the New Corner Office. The New Corner Office is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your favorite shows.