Open door or door ajar ?

Question

I started my management job 9 weeks ago and I manage a team of 12 people. I really want to have an “open door” policy of access to me for my team and that’s what I told them when I started. Trouble is – they took me at my word which is what I thought I wanted but I find I’m continually interupted to the point I have to stay late every night to get my own work done. My team are great. They are good workers and not time wasters. What they come to me with is important to the work. What can I do? Basically I really believe in “open door” but in practice it’s driving me nuts.

Answer

We really sympathise with your situation, T. You had no choice but to start as you did. In your situation (of which we know more detail) your team had to feel comfortable about their access to you and to trust that they had all the access to you that they needed. By now, they will be comfortable with you and trust in your support so now you can ease them into being on a longer rope.

You need 2 things – a “door ajar” policy and a schedule of times when people can come to see you .

How about creating an occasion to meet briefly with your whole team? You could even make it a half -hour special coffee break, bring in coffee and cookies or get the team to bring their own drink and you bring cookies – whatever seems right and fits best for you. Don’t make too big a deal of it but use it as a “we’ve done a great job so far” situation or a “thanks for a good start”.

Tell them you really appreciate the communication between all of you. Say that now you have all been working together for 9 weeks, and you’ve proved you all work well together, you’d like to suggest a few refinements. If appropriate, you might also say that you also have a special project of your own which has been assigned to you. Say there’s a deadline on it of 2 weeks from now and you have to work on that. Don’t over play your own work though – the team still needs to feel important to you but it’s ok to gently remind them that you have your own tasks. Say that you feel everyone can now adjust to “normal access”.

1. Describe that you’d like to try out – just for a month – a system where you have a couple or just one “open door” time per day when you can see the team. Decide times to suit yourself – e.g. one morning and one afternoon – perhaps 10-11am and 4-5pm. The early one would allow you to get your own vital tasks done before 10am and the afternoon time would be just before day end (so you can be pretty sure people won’t over-run that session). On a good day, this should allow you 6 hours of time for yourself. Have an appointment list for the whole work week hung near your door for the team to sign up to your “open door” sessions. Make the appointments in blocks of 10 minutes, and ask that the team work co-operatively and consult together to sign up according to their needs. The team are likely then to self regulate and not over-run because they know they are taking someone else’s time. In 2 x one hour sessions per day, you could see the whole team every day if necessary. We hope you don’t need that but to begin with, the team are assured they have the access they need.

2. Say that for the rest of the day, outside the 2 sessions, your door will be “ajar” and you should actually half close it. Say that of course you can be interrupted but only for emergencies.

3. Say you’ll review how the new system is working after a month. That should give enough time to let the new system embed and work well and reassure the team.

Caution – don’t put the new system in place during a crisis. If a crisis develops, suspend the system for a day or so but re-instate it after the crisis passes. Don’t scare the team. They had a bad time before you arrived and you don’t want to spook them into thinking you’re withdrawing from them just when it’s starting to go well.

Hope that helps.
Elizabeth