Navigating the garbage can: How agendas help managers cope with job realities

Abstract

Executive Overview Looking for ways to get results. Leveraging time, energy, and influence. Keeping a boss, colleague or subordinate happy. Hoping for personal satisfaction. These activities and concerns give shape to managers' working days, and are reflected in the work agendas that they create to guide their activities. Work agendas come in many forms: subconscious mental notes, scribbled scraps of paper, and elaborate lists and charts. Effective agenda-setting strategies vary in part with the characteristics and conditions of a manager's job. Finely articulated and prioritized agendas are useful for some kinds of jobs and conditions, while flexible agendas that are prioritized by theme are more appropriate for others. Managers' work agendas represent an important bridge between broad organizational goals and plans and their implementation under what sometimes are chaotic conditions in organizations.