Breaking Down

Sorry if I got a bit emotional on you guys yesterday. I've just been worried a lot about how we're going to manage this year recently, and it all sort of came to a head.

I would have posted a little earlier today than this, but my brother Dave wanted me to sit and talk with him about the post I wrote. It seems that he has been feeling the burden of trying to manage way too many things at one time as much as I have. When he and I started doing this job, it was with the intent that one of us could serve as a backup for the other if something happened. In reality, the responsibilities we've had added to our workload means that both of us together can barely keep up.

Between trying to keep the walls capable of holding off the zombie swarms and the forty other things we have to keep an eye on every day, it's getting to be too much for us. Honestly, the sheer volume of work to be done is so large that it's almost certain to lead to mistakes. Bad ones.

So Dave talked to the council (well, the rest of the council--you may remember that both of us are actually on it) and basically told them what our trainees have already figured out: we need a larger full time coordination staff.

He did most of the talking, I did most of the sitting and being quiet. It worked out pretty well. While the council are trusted friends and colleagues, most of them do other things full-time. They make decisions as a group for the compound, but they don't handle the day to day operations of it. That's what my brother and I are for.

Were for, I should say. Now we have seven people working for us full time. The trainees have been pulled from their old work and will each be doing part of the job that I used to do. Some will do scheduling. Some will manage materials. Some will do projects. You get the idea, yeah? And the neat thing is that they will rotate out every few days on what part of Operations they handle, so that everyone gets the same amount of experience and practice in covering every part.

Dave will be in charge of implementation. That's a fancy way of saying he gets to keep doing what he's doing--building stuff. I'm in charge of coordinating all of the Operations staff. Which is dandy with me. I'm happy to shift so much of the workload to others as well as getting fresh sets of eyes on the problems we face. Getting feedback from people that think differently than I do is important, since you never know what I might miss and they might catch.

I get to do the same thing I've always done, really, but with the lion's share of the grunt work spread out among all of us. I hate to think of reducing our workforce to manage this, but breaking down the responsibilities that Dave and I have managed for so long will (hopefully) make this place safer and more efficient in the long run.

Now I need to go. Lena and I are working on a game plan for a team of Jamie's scouts to go retrieve the mobile cell transmitters. Hoping to get everything ready to go by the morning.