One of the best positions I ever had in my church was when I was called as the clerk for my congregation. I was responsible for managing all the congregation’s records and supervising three other clerks (finance, membership, history).
It’s not too often they extend a position like that to someone who has good organisational skills. I was excited, and knew that based on the last few individuals who had been in the position, there would be lots to do.
One of the first things I noticed was wrong was there was no distribution mechanism set up for correspondence. If a letter came in from the headquarters that needed to be distributed to all the congregational leaders or if we needed to get our curriculum orders made, I had to do it all by hand with each person individually. It was the same thing if someone asked me to print off a report (such as a year-to-date budget summary): I would have to track them down to give them the report.
Ironically, in my office, there was a pigeonhole attached to the wall. Despite that a few of the slots were labelled, it was used mostly as a closet; people used it for storing things they didn’t want to bring home.
The first thing I did was clear out the pigeonhole. I put everything into a pile on my desk, and then labelled every mailslot for each clerical position and auxiliary in the congregation.
Following that, I sorted through all the material in the pile on my desk. I shredded anything over a year old (one item was the minutes from a meeting held ten years previous). I reinserted the remaining items into the pigeonhole according to who should own it.
Once I got that out of the way, the next step was to change the process that was used to that point for distributing correspondence.
From that point, every time I had to print out a report, I would tell the person, “I will print it out and put it in your mailslot”, pointing out which mailslot was his/hers. When I needed to copy correspondence for everyone of distribute things like curriculum order forms, I would put them in all the mailslots and inform recipients where they were at our next executive meeting.
Occasionally, I needed to mention reminders in the executive meeting that some mail boxes needed emptying.
Eventually, however, the system became quite successful and everyone came to rely on it.
I am no longer the clerk, but the system still operates today. I often see people come into the clerk’s office to check if anything in their mailslotes.
Much of what happens in my workplace has significant legal and economic ramifications, both for us and our clients. We have a sophisticated communications logging system where each incoming email (only to our central email address, not personal ones), snail mail and fax are logged and date stamped. Although this may be more than what you needed, I am surprised that the pigeon hole box was “misused” as much as it was.
LOL, why would they assign organizational duties to an organized person?
“I am surprised that the pigeon hole box was “misused†as much as it was.”
This is what happens when you put unorganised people in organisational positions. :)