CAD Manager's Q&A: Help, I'm Overwhelmed

I?ve got more to do than I can handle, and things are starting to get out of control. How can I get back in control of the CAD management situation without losing my job?

Robert Green responds:  Realize that you can’t do everything and that you may need some help.

The secret to management isn't how much you personally can achieve but how much you can achieve via management of an extended team of people.  After all, there’s only so much you can do in a given week, right?

As technologists, we like to do things ourselves so we know the job is done right.  This personality trait serves us well at times, but works to our disadvantage in the management realm because we tend to hate delegating.  And let’s face it: The only way to get more done in the same time is to leverage and delegate. 

The true measure of managerial prowess is how much your team achieves, not how much you achieve.  Some management truisms come to mind:

· Your management really doesn’t care how a task gets accomplished.

· Your management won’t care how hard you personally are working if a task doesn’t get accomplished.

· You’ll get far more respect if you ask for help than if you stubbornly refuse to delegate and miss a deadline.

So how might you delegate?  Here are some approaches to consider:

· Hire an outside consultant to help you over short-term humps.

· Bring in part-time CAD labor during periods of heavy production deadlines.

· Train promising CAD operators in some aspects of CAD maintenance and management so they can help you with redundant tasks.

· Involve power users with CAD management and training tasks whenever they’re available, particularly during software upgrades.

So, why not think about some tasks for which you could request help and present your ideas to your management to gauge receptiveness.  When you take your proposal to your management team, be sure you can answer the following questions:

· How often will you need help?

· How will this help the company in the long term?

· How much will it cost (if an external resource)?

Now that you’ve got management’s attention, you can make some long-term strides toward leveraging yourself.  You can go get the work done and get the credit you deserve.  Trust me when I say your management won't care how you got it done.  They’ll just know that you did.