He's feeling swamped

An editor of a web-based news operation told me he sometimes feels he isn't finishing anything.
He faces daily challenges from competitors on the web, and he also has to plan for long-term upgrades in his product. He has many projects on his plate, not enough people to do them all and not enough time. New projects appear regularly.
What should he do? He is organized but not compulsively organized. He has run large, complex publishing enterprises before. What's different now is that he is not always in control of what shows up on his plate, and his own long-term goals often have to go on the back burner.

Start with a list
Here's what I suggested. Start with a list of projects outstanding, when they were assigned, what's been accomplished, which tasks need to be completed on each project, who can do them and an estimated time commitment needed for each task. In short, show yourself and your team and your boss where you are. Measure the problem so that it can be understood better. Then it isn't one big crushing weight but a series of discrete issues that can be dealt with separately.

Put it on paper -- maybe facing pages of a notebook for each of the dozen or two dozen projects -- or put it on a spreadsheet, but put it all down somewhere where it can be reviewed quickly. You need to understand the size and scope of the challenge.

Review your progress
If you're reviewing progress weekly, you and your staff can then have some sense of accomplishment, that you're moving forward.
The weekly review also allows you and your team to re-set priorities when appropriate. Your people will understand better what they're doing and why they're doing it.

If you lay out the specifics for the boss, it gives him or her a chance to make some informed decisions about priorities. And you won't come off as someone who can't get things done or is a whiner. Bosses can be unrealistic at times, or so some of my people have told me.

David Allen's book on what he calls "stress-free productivity," "Getting Things Done" might help in managing multiple priorities.

Stephen Covey's Seven Habits has good sections on getting organized, but as he lays out so clearly, it all starts with deciding what the goals are and working from there to set priorities for your activity.

How to make your newsroom multimedia

For editors who are trying to get their newsrooms up to speed on digital media, Mark Briggs has produced an invaluable 132-page book that is available free online in English, Spanish and Portuguese. You can download it in PDF format.
"Journalism 2.0" is a good place to start with multimedia storytelling. Each chapter has simple, direct instructions on how to harness readily available technology in new ways. Editors and news directors who have been baffled by their lack of training in certain types of technology will find help in overcoming the barriers.

Briggs gives you just enough technical language so that you can understand both the potential and the limits of the technology so as to avoid frustration.
If you are, say, a veteran radio news director, the advice on how to make the most of photos will be invaluable; to a veteran photographer, the advice will represent the basics of the craft. At the same time a photographer who is trying to add sound to a slide show on the web will pick up some tips on how to edit for the ear that every radio journalist already knows.
It's the kind of book that beginners and veterans alike can use right now and begin getting their hands dirty.

Managing conflict of print vs. web
The information in this book could help manage some of the newsroom conflicts that occur when, for example, the print people and web people tend to isolate themselves from each other, a problem they have struggled with at the Washington Post. An editor could create an ongoing series of courses based on the chapters of this book that bring specialists from both parts of the newsroom together. The courses could remove some of the fear factor that veterans may be facing, and it may show the younger tech-savvy folks how the basics of good journalism translate into a better web product.

Useful in Latin America
For any of us who are doing training of journalists in Latin America, it is tremendously valuable to have this available in Spanish and Portuguese. And for those of us who are trying to remove the barriers to a multimedia newsroom, it is a helpful tool.

"Journalism 2.0" is an initiative of J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism,
a center of the University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism, and of the Knight Citizen News Network,
which is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Executive coaching basics

There are many types of executive coaches. My specialty has been working with news editors and other media executives. There are a couple of important things for a person to realize who is considering executive coaching.



First, the coach is not going to tell you what to do. You wouldn't learn anything and wouldn't feel confident to handle problems on your own. The coach will act as a guide and sounding board. He or she will ask you questions aimed at getting you to examine an issue from new angles so that you can try new approaches and find new solutions.



Second, your coach is going to ask you to accept some measure of responsibility for the problems that you're facing at work and to hold yourself accountable. When you do this, when you accept that responsibility, you can begin to get into action to solve the problems. It's up to you.



Third, when you are at a management level, 90 percent of your work is not about the technical parts of the job but about the people. You can change many things about your working environment, but you can't change other people. The good news is that in working with a coach, you can change yourself, what you do and how you do it. You'll find that when you make even small changes in your behavior, especially in how you communicate with other people, they will change in response. As the leader, you have to be the person willing to change first.