Three weeks ago several members of the account I work on were asked to switch roles with each other. I was one of 6 or 7 asked to move to a different role, a move I welcomed. Several of us have questioned why management decided to do this switch but after talking to a few of the team I think I know why.
One of the people who switched had expressed an interest in project management. The role he was doing is very process oriented and they asked me to fill it.
I was not happy in my current role and to be honest, it was not a good fit for me. It required a degree of network knowledge that I did not possess and that made things awkward on a team that was already very short staffed.
They backfilled the role I was performing with someone who had done the role many years ago and had the skill set to fit in better with the team. He seemed indifferent about the switch, but he does not seem disappointed about it.
His role is being back filled with a guy who used to assist the person whom I am replacing. Like many people on the account, we do a hodge podge of functions and handing them all over to one person usually is a little chaotic. So what has happened is that some of the functions are being moved to the logical person. The problem with that is that the logical person is me and now I am doing a new role plus parts of other people's roles as well. It makes for a hectic day. They work is not hard (I still ask a lot of "Where do I find ..." questions) but the volume over the past 2 weeks has been insane. I am getting about 150 e-mails a day, most all of which need research. Delegating any of it is difficult because the person who did this before me liked to be involved with everything. I guess he wanted to make sure that everything was done correctly, but it had a price. He got very little sleep and his health is somewhat frail. He did manage to do a super job of documenting things and that has been a big help.
As for the other people, I am not sure how they all fit into the puzzle, although one of them has been asking me do things for him that he can do on his own (following up with on site people regarding asset management) but after talking to him he is okay with doing those talks himself now.
The funny thing is that what my boss wants me to do, what I do, and what others think I do are three different things. I actually could use an assistant (Yes I am that busy) but I am not sure how that would all work. We have one I could leverage, I am sure since she is not overly busy but I am not sure how my boss would like that.
Something to think about.
