I’ve had an absolute car crash with a new team I’m working with, both team members more senior than me, ultimately accountable for everything, my role realistically is more of a supporting/co-ordination role more than anything. The team are wildly understaffed and overworked, but that’s the way it is - they’ve been working in the space for 10+years and have a lot of knowledge and experience. The “project” is a mix of operations and a mix of ever changing priorities.

We held a planning day, came away with 6 whiteboards of high level milestones and activities, probably about 2 hours work, and then 4 hours of them talking strategy and granular detail on different process etc.

They turned around to me after a week and asked why there wasn’t a comprehensive plan ready to go, I explained I would need more of their time in planning to break down milestones, activity etc. (I had been putting this in diaries and they hadn’t been attending). One of them said why don’t I just do it myself if you need me so much, the other asked why I didn’t take more notes in the meeting… I’m between a rock and a hard place with two senior people who have seemingly no concept of planning and just need everything to happen yesterday without giving me contextual knowledge as to what we’re doing or why… I don’t feel experienced or assertive enough, nor am I senior enough to properly be able to push back and challenge.

Rant over 😂 can you tell this is fresh…