Too Big to Handle vs Too Big To Fail
I never heard of too big to fail until the banking crisis that caused the recession in 2008. Having an emotionally abusive mother, I was often told I wasn't good enough.
My self-talk had to reverse believing that line of thought. I always told myself that "I could do anything". That thought carried me through my professional life for many years, with each position offering me unlimited room to grow and expand my skills far beyond the norm.
In the 90's I started as a Temp without any training for an international membership organization. (The woman who was supposed to train me was stuck in the "Call Center" on another floor of our building for days.) I came into the job being told "count the cards" which I didn't understand until I saw my new "L" shaped desk in the corner. It was literally piled close to a foot high with membership cards from front to back, one side to the other, with even more in boxes underneath it.
My brain went into overdrive. Returning to the tour I had of the mail and printing area, after asking a few questions, I determined I could manually count and weigh several samples, then calculate the number of cards per unit of weight. Using the tare weight feature of their nifty scales to remove the box weight from the total.
Boring, but easier than counting the entire amount of cards. There was a cart I could borrow to move them to the scale. I always want to work smarter rather than harder.
Of course, that didn't work for the smaller ones but my spreadsheet skills are good. I was one of the first non-management employees there to have a PC with Lotus 1-2-3. That was a good thing! Yes, boys and girls, before Windows and Office we used Lotus and Word Perfect.
I created a spreadsheet instead of the legal pad that had been used in the past. It showed the number issued and the number returned. At that point, we had over 1.2 million members in 67,000 sanctioned leagues in over 2,700 local and state associations. Local associations exist in every state as well as some foreign countries.
Little did I know, that this monstrous pile on the desk was just the beginning trickle of what would become a flood of returned cards from the previous year. The mail department that was my savior would bring a cart (or more) full of boxes daily for some time to come in the next month or so.
There was always a challenge in the form of "we always did it that way" but fortunately I had a boss that didn't "buy-in" to that or believe that was a reason to continue to do things that way. She also encouraged us to come in weekly to talk about a triumph and a challenge from the week. Sometimes just discussing challenges would give me an idea to solve them.
Somewhere during that time, my phone started to ring with women in varying degrees of distress, up to full-blown sobs. They would explain that they were the newly elected Treasurer or Secretary/ Treasurer of their association with no financial or accounting background. They had been given a Financial Report that was due soon, along with box after box of "records".
Many times I would say " Don't worry, I'll help you" and step by step we would get rid of most of the "records". Remember this was before the widespread use of cell phones or even wireless phones. Not everyone had a 50-foot cord like I did at home. I would ask "can we get the boxes to an area where the phone was available?" If not they had to go a bit at a time and then call me back.
Often many of the boxes were in bad shape from being stored in a garage or basement. They could even water-damaged (or worse) so I would suggest getting a few new ones and a heavy-duty trash bag. Then going through everything: throwing out all rule books except the current year, setting aside all cards (to send me) except current year, (the current year they keep), any paper that was not minutes of any meetings, or related to the last 7 years of finances had to go (preferably shredded for the financial data.)
Most often the result of this organizing was smaller and much more efficient. It also allowed the poor woman to gather what she needed for the Financial Report which was only two pages including room for signatures from her, the president and the audit committee. Most of it was fill in the blank: how many members, how much collected for dues, and how much remitted to the State and National Organizations.
I created my own title after redesigning my job. so my title needed to move from Membership Clerk to Financial Report Analyst. With approval from my boss, I then included these with the outgoing Financial Reports. I like to think it eliminated some of the angst these volunteer Treasurers and Secretary / Treasurers felt going forward knowing there was someone to turn to in this daunting task.
My self-talk had to reverse believing that line of thought. I always told myself that "I could do anything". That thought carried me through my professional life for many years, with each position offering me unlimited room to grow and expand my skills far beyond the norm.
In the 90's I started as a Temp without any training for an international membership organization. (The woman who was supposed to train me was stuck in the "Call Center" on another floor of our building for days.) I came into the job being told "count the cards" which I didn't understand until I saw my new "L" shaped desk in the corner. It was literally piled close to a foot high with membership cards from front to back, one side to the other, with even more in boxes underneath it.
My brain went into overdrive. Returning to the tour I had of the mail and printing area, after asking a few questions, I determined I could manually count and weigh several samples, then calculate the number of cards per unit of weight. Using the tare weight feature of their nifty scales to remove the box weight from the total.
Boring, but easier than counting the entire amount of cards. There was a cart I could borrow to move them to the scale. I always want to work smarter rather than harder.
Of course, that didn't work for the smaller ones but my spreadsheet skills are good. I was one of the first non-management employees there to have a PC with Lotus 1-2-3. That was a good thing! Yes, boys and girls, before Windows and Office we used Lotus and Word Perfect.
I created a spreadsheet instead of the legal pad that had been used in the past. It showed the number issued and the number returned. At that point, we had over 1.2 million members in 67,000 sanctioned leagues in over 2,700 local and state associations. Local associations exist in every state as well as some foreign countries.
Little did I know, that this monstrous pile on the desk was just the beginning trickle of what would become a flood of returned cards from the previous year. The mail department that was my savior would bring a cart (or more) full of boxes daily for some time to come in the next month or so.
There was always a challenge in the form of "we always did it that way" but fortunately I had a boss that didn't "buy-in" to that or believe that was a reason to continue to do things that way. She also encouraged us to come in weekly to talk about a triumph and a challenge from the week. Sometimes just discussing challenges would give me an idea to solve them.
Somewhere during that time, my phone started to ring with women in varying degrees of distress, up to full-blown sobs. They would explain that they were the newly elected Treasurer or Secretary/ Treasurer of their association with no financial or accounting background. They had been given a Financial Report that was due soon, along with box after box of "records".
Many times I would say " Don't worry, I'll help you" and step by step we would get rid of most of the "records". Remember this was before the widespread use of cell phones or even wireless phones. Not everyone had a 50-foot cord like I did at home. I would ask "can we get the boxes to an area where the phone was available?" If not they had to go a bit at a time and then call me back.
Often many of the boxes were in bad shape from being stored in a garage or basement. They could even water-damaged (or worse) so I would suggest getting a few new ones and a heavy-duty trash bag. Then going through everything: throwing out all rule books except the current year, setting aside all cards (to send me) except current year, (the current year they keep), any paper that was not minutes of any meetings, or related to the last 7 years of finances had to go (preferably shredded for the financial data.)
Most often the result of this organizing was smaller and much more efficient. It also allowed the poor woman to gather what she needed for the Financial Report which was only two pages including room for signatures from her, the president and the audit committee. Most of it was fill in the blank: how many members, how much collected for dues, and how much remitted to the State and National Organizations.
I created my own title after redesigning my job. so my title needed to move from Membership Clerk to Financial Report Analyst. With approval from my boss, I then included these with the outgoing Financial Reports. I like to think it eliminated some of the angst these volunteer Treasurers and Secretary / Treasurers felt going forward knowing there was someone to turn to in this daunting task.
posted by Bluesbaby at 9:49 PM
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