The past coupe weeks were pretty stressful for me. My two bosses
were both out of the office. It made me felt like an orphan in the
office, especially the one who had many little brothers and sisterns to
take care of.

Most of the time, my two bosses keep very good communication
channels with us. We get into the office, chat about the current status
for all the projects. Then, I only need to make sure everyone is
getting his jobs done. The rest of day would be very easy for me.
I would hide in my office, reading all my research materials, review the
documents, and chat with my group members in regular base, just
to make sure all the engineers are doing the right thing. As long as I
keep my head straight, life in the office would be far from stressful
for me.

So, when they both traveled, my daily routine became so much
tougher then usually. First, there were so many extra things needed
to be taken care of. Then, the toughest among all was that I had to
figure out the priority of the projects, following up with them, including
the action items, from R&D projects to documentations, from
technical engagements to business status reviews, from external
marketing events to internal channel developments, or even to each
of the recruiting effort.

I have to say that I appreciate to have them around. In the past two
weeks, it would take me about 2-3 hours only to figure out what I
should be working on. I had to think like general managers, each
morning when I got into the office, I needed to have a good idea about
what questions to ask to each person in every particular day, and
made a good decision when I got back to my office. Then later in
the morning, went back to them, explained what I would need from
them, and explained to them what need to be handled first, and what
the apporach should be, and the priority of each project .

The work load increased like 4 hours for each one of the days, at
least. And the stress about figuring out whether the understanding
of each status was corrent and whether the approach of each person
was corrent, was even heavier. There were couple days, the office
was in chaos. There were disputes among the two R&D managers
who were complaining to each others about the conflict of interests.
There were arguements between the marketing engineers to the
sales department about how to address the customers' request.
When such bombs were thrown into the mix, a day seems to be so
short to get the job done.

Worst of all, the daily phone calls from those two bosses were
even tougher. Usually, there is no need to provide the update to top
level managers, as long as situation is smooth. The only thing to
do is to show them the progress of all the status, with table or chart.
But, when they were away, they would like to understand the status.
In that 10-15 minutes of the phone call, I had to make sure all the
necesary information was delivered to then correctly. Those phone
calls forced me to understand all the projects. It was particular
tough especially for the inter-RD groups and even the inter-divisions
issues. For those projects, usually my involvements is minimum. But,
those are the crucial projects that need to be executed.

Most stressful situations were those weekly VP to VP conference calls
that happened between us and the customers. The engineers and
marketing teams need to provide their status, followed with the
internal meetings to make sure each of the status was valid. Then we
had to summarize the status to the way that VP's care. It was
amazing how those vice presidents think. They usually care about only
the high level issues. But if there was anything with minor
ambiguity, they would grill us to death. In one conference call, our R&D
manager was pinned on one performance issues. His explanation
did not satisfy customers. Then we had to figure out how to figure
out the real situation, and provide dammage control.

The most time comsuming part about the two weeks was actually
taking care of the people. It was not easy to keep everyone at the
same intensive level when big bosses were gone. People tend to lay
back, or take it easy. But in the mean time, people would miss
the pat talk from the management. Playing cheerleader was not
easy. Everyone loves to feel his/her work is appreciated. To show the
concern, we have to make sure what to say to them and encourage
them, in the mean time, review their projects in the mean time.
This was when I realized how important "being critical but not
judgemental" is as a management. For a less exposed, less visibility
projects, people particularly like to fell the care. It was a opportunity
for us to review the projects carefully and make sure we are doing
the right thing. And, when there were debates or arguements, the
remedy would be necessary after the issues weer resolved. A good
pizza lunch, a good round of beers after work would do it, but it
took even more time out of my personal life. With all the time spent
on these issues, writing blog became a luxuary. When I read the
articles in my blogs in the past two weeks, I had no idea what I was
thinking, or what I cared when I wrote those.

My wife kept asking me, why I still needed to stay in the office for so
long when they were away? I had hard time to find the explanation.
But, I only knew that when the general manager came back on
Wednesday, the stress was so much reduced. When the other boss's
office were bright in Friday morning, I finally got my breather.