Making Plans for Next Steps
By Tana M. Mann Easton, Lead Efficiency Engineer
One of my secret weapons in establishing myself as a valued colleague in organizations is to never view tasks as out of my court. Unless someone is asking me for a favor, I continue to see tasks as mine even if I’m waiting on something from someone else. I’ve noticed that for other people, if they lob a question or request to someone else, then that task leaves their mind and they don’t consider it theirs anymore. They assume that the person they’re requesting something from will get back to them, and then at that point, they’ll pick up the task again. But what happens in the professional world more often than people care to admit is that those initial questions or requests are missed or ignored by the receiver, the task goes into no man’s land, and it ceases to exist for anyone. And only when a client complains and asks why they haven’t received the answer they were looking for is it discovered where the path to an answer stopped. At this point, the original employee who asked the question blames the other employee and says they were waiting on their answer. The questioned employee blames the questioner and points out they could have followed up. And both employees are less trusted because they contributed to a hole in the system.
The way that I’ve always eliminated this issue is, after I finish any meeting or task for today, I ask myself, “Are more steps needed?” I then make a checklist of those next steps and schedule a plan for them. After a meeting, if I promised to send information to attendees, I take a few minutes right after the meeting adjourns to send the information. Taking time right after the meeting adjourns can often save time. The body of my email can simply say, “As promised at today’s meeting,” and then I attach the information. If you wait a day or two, you may need to expound more in the body of the email and remind people what you promised and why.
If I’m scheduling a meeting with someone, I don’t forget about this task once I send my availability to the person. I use my tasking system to make sure that if they don’t respond in a week (or whatever time frame is both not too short to be obnoxious and not too long to make progress on the reason for the meeting), then I know I’ll follow up with them. If I go to a yearly doctor checkup and can’t schedule my next year’s checkup because their calendaring system only goes out 6 months, then I have a reminder in my task system to call and schedule my next appointment in 6 months. If I’m on a phone call and a client mentions their first grandchild is due in 3 months, I can leverage my task system to make sure that I send them best wishes around that time. For every to do on my list, if I’m not marking it completely complete, then I’m taking note of the next step and scheduling that next step. It only takes a minute for me to take these next step notes while I’m still fresh and thinking about that task. This minute to strategize and schedule out into the future makes my task system iron clad, where no balls are dropped once they enter my court.
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Productively Yours,
Focus to Evolve Team