Dear Bob ... I have been reading you columns and advice for a long time. The reason it has been a long time is because I have learned a great deal from you through your writings. Recently you answered a letter with the following quote, "There's a larger answer, which gets to what organizations can do to prevent this kind of thing from happening, and that's to train managers in how to delegate. It wo Dear Bob …I have been reading you columns and advice for a long time. The reason it has been a long time is because I have learned a great deal from you through your writings. Recently you answered a letter with the following quote, “There’s a larger answer, which gets to what organizations can do to prevent this kind of thing from happening, and that’s to train managers in how to delegate. It won’t fix the manager who delays, but it will provide that manager’s boss with better tools to make sure the procrastinator stays on track. It’s a lot like project management in that respect: When you give someone an assignment with a deadline, there are ways to find out they’re behind before the deadline arrives.”My concern is that this is just the situtation that my boss is in and therefore she delegates to me. Because of that, I have so many delegated projects that I cannot get my other projects completed on time, and day to day operational work done. I am convinced that I could work 15-16 hours a day, 7 days a week, and not make a dent in the workload. What can I do since I have NO ONE to delegate to? Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.– OverloadedDear Overloaded … From what you describe, the changes are good you’re in an irreparable company. There simply are no good answers to your question. Here’s why:The leaders of some companies understand they have limited resources. They push those resources hard, but not so hard that there’s nothing left to give. Part of this recognition is making choices about priorities – they understand it’s better to do fewer things well than to take on everything they can think of.Then there are the other kind. Here’s what should happen in your situation: You sit down with you manager to have a discussion about priorities. The two of you agree on what’s reasonable for you to accomplish. She has the same conversation with everyone else who works for her. Then she meets with her manager to have a similar discussion at a departmental level, and so on until the whole company’s priorities are set and in balance. (It’s actually more complicated than that because the starting point for all of this is top-down rather than bottom-up … in the end there’s a two way flow of information that results in the right assignments for everyone.) What would really happen in way too many companies is that somewhere up the chain, a manager will say, “I don’t care. Find a way to get it done or I’ll find someone who can.”What’s even worse is that in a kind of ugly quasi-Darwinian way, market forces encourage this kind of behavior, although I personally think that in the long run, doing what you can well works better than doing everything you can imagine poorly.So here’s my best advice: If you haven’t already, have the conversation with your manager. We both might be surprised – it might result in the desired outcome. If it doesn’t, you tried. If it doesn’t, set your own priorities based on what will get you into the most and least trouble. Reserve 80% of your schedule for the most important items. For the others, either do them the quickest and dirtiest way you can think of, or else figure out how to play “ping pong” with them.The former strategy is valid because things that aren’t worth doing aren’t worth doing well. The latter can work wonders, because you aren’t the only person who’s overloaded. For many assignments you’ll need touch-backs, approvals, opinions, meetings or something with other people inside and outside the company. So long as you bounce items that are on the critical path onto the other side of the ping pong table, you can always tell your manager, “We can’t proceed until we hear back from x, y and z, and so far they haven’t responded.”So long as it’s true, you’ll have given your manager the political cover she needs to keep from getting massacred. And in any event, whoever passed along some of these assignments will forget about them long before anything hits the fan. It’s the best advice I have, other than finding a better-managed company to work for. They do exist, but sadly, if everyone I’ve given this advice to has taken it, those companies have a flood of excellent applicants who are, by now, in front of you in the queue.– Bob ——– Technology Industry