This is only a viable strategy if you are under resourced. There’s a whole art to managing upward by crisis.
Successful communication strategy: There is too much work for the department. If we don’t scale up we’re going to have some kind of incident or failed delivery in the next few months. <explain expected failures, provide numbers>. I’m doing everything I can to keep this from happening, but there simply are not enough resources. I’ll email you a summary of all of this.
Then proceed to work a normal number of hours until a genuine incident occurs. Refer back to the earlier conversation (and email summary). Receive resources if the problem actually impacts the company. It may have just been acceptable risk for management.
Key mistake I see: Don’t work 80 hours a week to be a hero unless you have a specific strategic goal in mind. You’re actually hurting the company by hiding a resource allocation issue.
Worse, competent managers won’t promote you for persistent Herculean efforts. For a couple reasons. First, they would need to replace you with two people. Second, you are not exactly showing that you understand how to solve a problem with teamwork if you’re solving every problem by working unsustainable hours.
Successful communication strategy: There is too much work for the department. If we don’t scale up we’re going to have some kind of incident or failed delivery in the next few months. <explain expected failures, provide numbers>. I’m doing everything I can to keep this from happening, but there simply are not enough resources. I’ll email you a summary of all of this.
Then proceed to work a normal number of hours until a genuine incident occurs. Refer back to the earlier conversation (and email summary). Receive resources if the problem actually impacts the company. It may have just been acceptable risk for management.
Key mistake I see: Don’t work 80 hours a week to be a hero unless you have a specific strategic goal in mind. You’re actually hurting the company by hiding a resource allocation issue.
Worse, competent managers won’t promote you for persistent Herculean efforts. For a couple reasons. First, they would need to replace you with two people. Second, you are not exactly showing that you understand how to solve a problem with teamwork if you’re solving every problem by working unsustainable hours.