Workshop · People
The week that filled itself
Almost everything that displaced your plan came through a door you opened: a yes given standing in a corridor, a message answered on the spot, a request accepted without asking when it was due.
- Duration
- 2 hours 30 min
- Delivery
- On site · Virtual
- Participants
- From 8 to 25 participants
- Investment
- Request a quote
Investment depends on scope, number of participants and delivery mode. We prepare a proposal at no obligation.
The problem it solves
On Monday the week fits in your head and looks reasonable. By Wednesday the plan is gone, and what displaced it was not an emergency but an accumulation of small requests accepted on your feet, without a date and without asking what they pushed aside. None was unreasonable on its own. Together they took the hours belonging to work that only moves when nobody interrupts.
The usual response is a longer list. The list grows, gets reordered on Mondays, and drags the same items along the bottom from week to week. Those items tend to be the important ones, precisely because nobody is chasing them. Urgent work arrives with a name attached and a person waiting. Important work arrives with nobody behind it.
In time this changes what a professional can offer. They become dependable for whatever is immediate and undependable for anything requiring continuity. Their own projects go out late or half-finished, the dates they give start being treated with reservation, and the work that would have distinguished their year stays in the part of the list that never rises.
What it covers
The workshop begins from an uncomfortable premise: the week does not fill itself. It fills with commitments somebody accepted, almost always in brief conversations and without conditions. The first part is given to making that flow visible. In the room, each participant records where their requests come from, in what form they arrive, who originates them, and which ones were accepted without agreeing a date, a scope, or what would be postponed in exchange.
On that inventory the group builds a criterion for priority, which is exactly what is missing when everything appears to be a priority. Participants practise the distinction between what is due soon and what carries consequence, examine the items that have sat at the bottom of the list for weeks, and discuss in a group the case nearly everyone recognises: the project of one's own that nobody chases and that therefore never gets done.
The central block is practice at the moment the request arrives, which is the only moment when negotiating is cheap. Through role play, participants work on accepting with conditions, asking for the real date instead of assuming it, offering an alternative when the request cannot be met, and giving early notice when an accepted commitment is going to move. They also practise with the hardest counterpart of all, the person who supervises them.
The closing section lays out next week in front of everyone. Each participant blocks the time belonging to work that needs continuity, decides what stays out and writes it down, and sets a short review at the end of the working week to compare what was planned with what happened. They leave with that week designed and with a list of live commitments that records, for each one, who it was agreed with and when it is due.
What participants learn
- Identify where commitments come from and how they enter your own week.
- Prioritise by consequence rather than by proximity of the due date.
- Apply a brief negotiation at the moment a request arrives, with date and scope agreed.
- Design a week that protects work which only advances without interruption.
- Evaluate, at the end of the week, the distance between what was planned and what happened.
Agenda
- Where commitments come from and how they enter
- Due date and consequence: two different criteria
- The item that has sat at the bottom of the list for weeks
- Accepting with conditions: date, scope and what gets displaced
- Giving early notice when a commitment is going to move
- Protecting the work that needs continuity
- Negotiating a request from the person who supervises you
- The review at the end of the working week
What the organisation leaves with
- A written inventory of live commitments with their origin, agreed date and current status.
- Next week designed, with continuity work blocked and the exclusions written down.
- A short negotiation script for the moment a new request arrives.
- The participant can state, when a request arrives, what gets displaced if it is accepted.
Programme details
- Format
- Workshop
- Also available as
- Executive talk · Intensive workshop
- Languages
- Español · English
- Includes
- Participant workbook
- Action plan
- Post-training resources
- Facilitation
- ALUD Consulting LLC — Global Business Transformation.
Who it is for
- Professionals who receive work from more than one person and through no single queue.
- Specialists whose work needs long blocks and gets fragmented every day.
- Supervisors who carry their own deliverables alongside a team.
- People who end the week fully occupied with their own projects untouched.
Frequently asked questions
- Is a particular app or named productivity method recommended?
- No tool is taught and no branded method is adopted. The workshop works on the decisions no application makes for you: what gets accepted, on what conditions, and what stays out. Whatever system the participant already uses will do.
- What if the real problem is that the volume of work exceeds the person?
- Then this session helps document it rather than solve it. A well-designed week makes the excess visible with evidence, but the load is corrected higher up, by deciding what stops being done or who else does it. That is worth saying before booking.
- Is it useful for someone who supervises a team?
- It is useful for their own week, which is what the session works on. Team capacity, distributing the load and the flow of work through an area are a different subject and are not covered here.
- Does the participant's supervisor need to attend?
- Not necessarily, and sometimes it is better that they do not, so the conversation stays candid. What does help is leadership knowing the group will leave negotiating dates, because that behaviour is noticed immediately.
Request this programme
Tell us the context and we will prepare a proposal tailored to your organisation. No obligation.
Working this inside the organisation
If this challenge will not be settled in one session, ALUD Consulting LLC works it as consulting: management consulting, human resources, strategy, organisational design, leadership development and business transformation.