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Delegating Delegation
October 17 2006
You know, I'm all for delegating tasks. As long as other people are doing them. I myself like to do my own things. I tend not to screw up, and when I do, I at least know where my mistake is and can usually fix it with some assistance. However....
The "Future of Honors" committee wanted to see the 18 pages of paperwork generated by the Honors Council Director Search subcommittee from last year. I have it all in paper form, but not electronic (which was how they wanted it).
I thought I would spread some knowledge around (as in, how to do things with the publishing programs on the computer), give an office worker a task with a little bit of meaning (as opposed to copying applications), and save myself from having to do it. Therefore, I showed Office Worker X how to scan everthing in, put it into Photoshop, shrink the file size, stick it into InDesign, and merge it all into one big PDF (as opposed to 18 small ones).
He did so, sent me the file, and I forwarded it on (I don't know why I didn't look at it) to Dr. Dennis George, the chair of the Future of Honors committee, two weeks ago, so he could send it on to everyone else, as agreed. This morning, he sends out a message to remind us of our meeting tomorrow and said he trusted everyone had a chance to read the file I had sent. Which only went to him, since he was supposed to forward it on.
I frantically sent the 12-MB file out to everyone (from my grandfather's dial-up connection) with a quasi-sarky note stating that I thought someone else was supposed to send it to the committee. Three minutes later, Dr. Pardue responds, saying that pages seem to be missing from the document. I try to open it on my computer, but the download won't finish.
I'm going in at 6:30 in the morning to try and rectify this. I hope I can just send one page as a quick "sorry I left this one out" addendum. But I'm thinking that I'm probably going to have to re-scan the whole thing. And I'm not happy. This committee is comprised of eight faculty members and me. I would rather they not think I'm completely incompetent before our second meeting even begins.
The "Future of Honors" committee wanted to see the 18 pages of paperwork generated by the Honors Council Director Search subcommittee from last year. I have it all in paper form, but not electronic (which was how they wanted it).
I thought I would spread some knowledge around (as in, how to do things with the publishing programs on the computer), give an office worker a task with a little bit of meaning (as opposed to copying applications), and save myself from having to do it. Therefore, I showed Office Worker X how to scan everthing in, put it into Photoshop, shrink the file size, stick it into InDesign, and merge it all into one big PDF (as opposed to 18 small ones).
He did so, sent me the file, and I forwarded it on (I don't know why I didn't look at it) to Dr. Dennis George, the chair of the Future of Honors committee, two weeks ago, so he could send it on to everyone else, as agreed. This morning, he sends out a message to remind us of our meeting tomorrow and said he trusted everyone had a chance to read the file I had sent. Which only went to him, since he was supposed to forward it on.
I frantically sent the 12-MB file out to everyone (from my grandfather's dial-up connection) with a quasi-sarky note stating that I thought someone else was supposed to send it to the committee. Three minutes later, Dr. Pardue responds, saying that pages seem to be missing from the document. I try to open it on my computer, but the download won't finish.
I'm going in at 6:30 in the morning to try and rectify this. I hope I can just send one page as a quick "sorry I left this one out" addendum. But I'm thinking that I'm probably going to have to re-scan the whole thing. And I'm not happy. This committee is comprised of eight faculty members and me. I would rather they not think I'm completely incompetent before our second meeting even begins.
