Week 5- Solving Problems

Having been in my internship with Senator Ossoff for just about 5 weeks now, I have been able to gather some more insights regarding leadership and teamwork in the office on both a day-to-day task level, and also on a much broader, long-term level.

Some helpful context is that the office, the legislative teams at least, are split by portfolio, and each portfolio has a set of issues, and a team consisting of a legislative assistant and a legislative correspondent (the junior staffer), in addition to a summer intern. My team’s portfolio covers a broad array of issues, but the the biggest ones that we are working on now are around infrastructure, transportation, and labor – 3 issues which have been a major focus of the last few months on the Hill. As a result, we have been incredibly busy and have had to work as a team to ensure that we do what needs to be done to advance legislation, advocate for Georgia, and support the Senator in his work on these issues. At times, there has been some mis-utilization I think of our team though on varying issues, and also of other office staff members who could support our work during busier times, but perhaps the biggest strain on our teamwork abilities has come in that because we are all so busy, and because we are working from different locations, communications can be strained and that can limit our capabilities as a team – whether it is looking for feedback on a memo for the Senator, trying to coordinate talking points for meetings, or addressing questions on research or other related projects, it can be difficult to communicate when we are constantly working on separate, but somewhat overlapping, projects or tasks. From this, one idea that I have had is that my team could potentially have a daily check in, either at the beginning or end of the day, to touch base on different tasks that we are working on together, but at different times, so that we can easily check-in, address concerns, and get feedback, as well as discuss priorities for the day. I think that doing so would help us, as a team, to ensure that our goals and priorities are aligned on a daily basis, and so that we can continue to effectively move forward on our projects. This would also help us to avoid getting caught up close to a deadline (or deadlines) on different projects, and enable us to get feedback from each other in a timelier manner. One thing that we have started to do recently that has helped a lot, is that the legislative correspondent for my team and I have worked the last 2 or 3 Friday afternoons to gather up loose ends on projects that we have, and send them to the legislative assistant on our team to flag anything, as necessary, for her to review on a weekly basis.

As an intern though, I might try to bring this up during my next team meeting or one-on-one to see how we might be able to better incorporate daily check-ins so that we can ensure that we are getting feedback, and collaborating as necessary, in a timely manner that doesn’t slow us down.