RE: Someone to do the "donkey work"? (take II)

["Downing, David" <david -dot- downing -at- fiserv -dot- com>]

Well yes, one of the reasons it bothers me is that it can take a l-o-n-g
time if there are a lot of manual references, and it seems like I should
be doing something else -- especially when I'm supposed to be completing
a big project ASAP, which is the case now.

David Downing
Senior Technical Writer
Credit Union Solutions
Fiserv
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Geoff Hart [mailto:ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca] 
Sent: Thursday, March 05, 2009 11:30 AM
To: Technical Writing; Downing, David
Subject: Someone to do the "donkey work"? (take II)

David Downing noted: <<Okay, so it may well be that it's better to  
just do the donkey work yourself for practical and budgetary reasons.>>

Although I was one of the folks who strongly suggested this, it's also  
appropriate to take a large step back and ask when my advice might not  
be appropriate. The obvious counterexample is that when performing the  
donkey work keeps you from completing your more urgent  
responsibilities, you need extra hands to get _all_ the work done.  
It's no longer the case that the work might somehow seem to be  
"beneath you", which is implicit in the phrase "donkey work" (i.e.,  
even an ass could do that job).

Given that you're basically irreplaceable for doing certain tasks  
(i.e., nobody else has the requisite skills), it makes sense to hire  
someone (or obtain volunteers from another group) to do the donkey  
work. The important point is to sell this to your manager in terms of  
"I only have time to do priority A; you'll need to find someone else  
to handle priority D", not "I'm too important to do this" or "you'd be  
wasting my skills on this lame-ass job". Both the latter may be true,  
but it won't win you any friends if that's the impression you give. <g>

--------------------------------------------------------
Geoff Hart (www.geoff-hart.com)
ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca / geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com
--------------------------------------------------------
***Now available***  _Effective onscreen editing_
(http://www.geoff-hart.com/books/eoe/onscreen-book.htm)

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