Conflicting deadlines in a small unit
You are a contract agent in a five-person unit. In three working days, the unit must send a 120-page draft report to a director and also prepare a 20-minute briefing for an external stakeholder meeting. One colleague is on planned leave, one is newly recruited and still learning the file, and one is working part-time. Your manager asks you to 'make sure both are delivered' but gives no priority. The director's office has said the report is needed for a legal deadline; the external meeting was requested by a partner organisation and can be rescheduled with two weeks' notice. The new colleague has offered to draft the briefing alone but has not yet used the template. A part-time colleague can cover two days next week. You have already worked overtime twice this month.
1. How should you sequence the work, and what should you communicate to your manager?
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Prioritise the report because it has a legal deadline, while immediately seeking to reschedule the external meeting using the two weeks' notice. Sequence: first confirm the reschedule in writing; then allocate the new colleague to bounded report sections with the template and a review checkpoint; ask the part-time colleague to prepare the briefing outline only after the report's critical path is protected. Tell the manager explicitly: 'Both cannot be delivered to standard in three days with current staffing. I propose report first, briefing rescheduled, and here are the risks.' Do not silently absorb the gap with more overtime, because that hides the capacity problem and may reduce quality on the legal deadline.
2. A colleague says: 'Just send the report with the briefing appended; the director won't read it.' How do you respond?
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Reject the suggestion. The report and the briefing serve different audiences and formats: a 120-page legal draft and a 20-minute external presentation cannot substitute for each other. Appending the briefing would not satisfy the partner organisation, could confuse the legal record, and may create confidentiality problems if external material is mixed with an internal draft. Explain that the correct response is to reschedule the external meeting or prepare a separate short briefing after the report is secured. If helpful, offer a one-page internal summary of the briefing points, but do not present it as delivery of the external commitment.
3. What is the most appropriate way to use the new colleague?
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Give the new colleague a clearly bounded task, not sole ownership of the external briefing. For example, assign specific report sections with the template, two examples of good practice, and a 24-hour review checkpoint. Pair them with the part-time colleague for the briefing outline so the template is used correctly. This develops the new colleague while managing risk. Asking them to draft the entire external briefing alone would be unfair and risky because they have not used the template, and the external meeting is a high-visibility commitment.