There was a time, long years ago, when taking care of your own job responsibilities was the only thing you had to do. We’ve all had surprising, even flabbergasting customer service experiences where the individual you’re dealing with either doesn’t have the interest, or the authority, or the capability to handle a simple request. Cable companies, software tech support, sixteen year old boys … you get the picture.

In this economy, it’s important to prove yourself as a versatile and willing free agent, able to bring expertise and perhaps a new perspective to any task that becomes necessary. During the life of a small business, people can potentially wear many hats to fill gaps in expertise

Case in point: a new Project Manager at Corbin (name withheld by request) was brought in to learn the ropes from our more experienced PMs when another was due to go on maternity leave. Because of the specialized nature of the work we do, it was important to allow adequate time for her to ramp up, building not only capability and knowledge, but also relationships with clients for the duration of the leave. Having been properly prepared, she dove in and managed the work beautifully. Soon she was not only assisting on existing projects, but developing new projects of her own.

Then came the Great Recession.

Corbin’s management needed to usher two people out of the company who were unfortunately not a part of the core business. It was a difficult time for all, including those who were having to pick up duties that had been assigned to full-time staff.

This Project Manager was asked to handle some administrative tasks that had previously been outside of her job description, such as expense reports. She accepted these assignments with the same energy that she’d given to her project management work. The results speak for themselves:

• An efficient, detail oriented approach, eliminating errors for our clients and extra costs for the company
• New internal protocols for submitting information
• Customized expense submittals per specific client requests
• Addition of expense reports into our studio management software
• New technologies purchased to save costs, paper and provide electronic verification of expenses for clients
• Most recently, a 4-figure annual savings on a Web conferencing contract!

Finding the right people has been and always will be critical to the ongoing success of any firm. Once we found someone like this Project Manager, we wanted to keep her motivated and busy, whether with billable work or in support of other functions. Her ability to bring fresh eyes and energy to a task that could be construed as drudgery saved us money and was a big relief to our other support staff. While she was surely not the only one who picked up extra duties in this recession, she’s used her position and skills to save us significant dollars.

More importantly, she’s shown us all a bit of everyday heroism.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 8:53 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, Where We Work, White Paper. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.