Recent client engagements have reminded me how easy it is to become overwhelmed with requests and expectations from our colleagues. On any given day, you could find that one comes to you for help with her time sheet, another needs a check by 3:00, the development assistant “reminds” you – for the first time! – that a grant report is due tomorrow and she needs the financial report from you. Your own work plan can get lost amid the distracting requests. It can be challenging to both accomplish it  and serve the needs of the organization your department is there to help.

It is certainly key to making progress that procedures be clearly and efficiently designed so that accurate information is gathered timely and you can be as efficient as possible. But just as important is managing your own reactivity.

Today is inauguration day. The news is full of information about Barack Obama, yet there’s one story I recall hearing on the election day evening news that I haven’t heard again. On that night, the NPR reporters said that the reason Obama hadn’t spoken on the news shows as early as people expected him to was that he was having a family dinner with his wife and daughters and he wasn’t answering his pager or his cell phone. Yes, it was the night he would learn whether the time and energy he had spent over the last two years of his life had been enough to achieve a most daring goal. Important as that was, he and Michelle isolated themselves from all speculation, drama, excitement and news so that they could have a quiet homecoming dinner with their children in their own dining room. They decided what mattered most and then protected it from everything until they were ready.

The kernel of this story that relates to the common predicament of nonprofit accountants is that you don’t need to let other people throw you off course. You don’t need to get caught up in their drama. You don’t need to comply immediately with their requests. It helps, certainly, to have an executive director or some members of your management team who can help reduce reactivity in an organization, but even without that, you can set your timelines, priorities, and processes and stick to them.

When someone comes to you with a demand, talk with them until the reasons for urgency are clear, and then make your own determination about the critical timeline. Keep smiling, keep listening, keep asking questions, stay calm, and when you have a clear picture of the task, tell them what you will do and when they can expect the finished product. Then follow through and deliver it. Letting them down will cause a breach of trust it may take a long time to repair. Performing as you said you would places another solid rock in the foundation of a great working relationship.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 7:49 pm and is filed under Nonprofit Finance, nonprofit accounting. 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.