Canadian Finance Blog

Can Work Procrastination Be a Symptom of a Larger Problem?

Posted: 05 Feb 2011 02:00 AM PST

The following excerpt on work procrastination is from End Procrastination Now!, written by William Knaus and published by McGraw-Hill.

If you tend to procrastinate persistently at work, is this a general pattern that you'd take with you anywhere you worked? If so, then you have an opportunity to work out your procrastination problem wherever you are working at the moment. On the other hand, if procrastination is a symptom of your being in the wrong job, it is a symptom worth heeding.

Sarah loved looking at the plaques and awards that she had won for excellence in sales. She had a habit of keeping on top of things and richly deserved her awards. She thought that her next logical step was a sales manager position. She applied for the position at her company when it opened, and she got the promotion.

That dream soon turned into a nightmare.

The management job was different from what Sarah had thought it would be. It partially involved a skill set that she already possessed, and partially a skill set that was not her cup of tea.

Sarah found she was great at advising individual members of the sales force on how to improve their performance, and at personally serving several key accounts. However, she was slow at or avoided reviewing reports, setting goals, designing staff training programs, and overall coordination of the sales force to achieve performance and sales objectives. She was weak on planning when this involved multiple staff members. Also, organizational politics presented Sarah with many unexpected challenges. Her former sales manager had been a master at finessing such matters and had shielded Sarah and the other salespeople from corporate politics. She was unprepared for competitive issues between herself and the managers of manufacturing, marketing, and accounting, each of whom had a deserved reputation as a bully. She was challenged getting her sales force to focus on issues, such as providing information on sales projections for their territories and completing sales reports.

Sarah was ambitious. A management job represented a step up in status and a higher salary. However, her new role brought to the surface multiple areas of difficulties that required her to function differently from the way she was prepared to function.

Procrastination surfaced in every way, and Sarah eventually couldn't get out of the hole she dug for herself. Her procrastination was a signal that she was in the wrong job. She went back to sales. She dealt exclusively with key accounts. She returned to her old form of operating like an efficiency superstar because she was back operating in an area where she could influence the outcome. Once again, she created an excellent track record.

Ed did an excellent job as a chief of staff for a state senator. His career profile suggested that this was a viable career direction. He also had the temperament, interests, and skills to function effectively as an elected public official.

The senator decided against running for reelection. As a reward for his good services, the senator cleared the way for Ed to get a job managing a homeless shelter.

Once he was on the job, Ed did quite well in managing his relationships with local politicians. He enjoyed the exchanges and camaraderie. However, that was not his primary job function. Key managerial aspects of his job proved to be trouble spots.

Ed disliked dealing with union matters. He soon created contention between himself and union officials with his personnel policies and practices. He often violated the collective bargaining agreement and had a growing list of arbitrations to attend.

His deteriorating relationship with the union resulted in the union members following his instructions to the letter. This led to a slowdown, and the buses did not run on schedule. In a thin-skinned and defensive way, Ed sloughed off consumer complaints about the declining quality of services and maintenance. Lacking knowledge of the operation, he relied on his subordinates to manage the day-to-day operation. Unfortunately, most of them had also gotten their jobs through political connections and suffered from limitations in management acumen. A series of unfavorable news articles were the kiss of death for his career as a manager of a municipal bus operation. At that point, his political friends figuratively threw him under the bus.

However, this was the best thing that could have happened to Ed at the time. He reentered the world of politics.

What went wrong? Ed got in over his head in an area in which he lacked executive management skills. He ticked off a powerful union. Rather than study ways to fix problems, he defended the current practices. He didn't replace managers who demonstrated inadequate capacity to handle the day-to-day operations. He skirted ways to meet customer expectations about timely services by taking his eye off that matter. This job was not his cup of tea, and that partially explains his procrastination across the spectrum of his primary job responsibilities.

Remember that the first part of ending procrastination is to become self-aware. Think about your procrastination habits at work and what's really causing them. Is procrastination a symptom of a larger problem? Could it be caused by job dissatisfaction or by another issue?