Comments on: How do you get people to do what they said they would do?

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:27:51 +0000

When I delegate, I also get an agreement on when the person will get back to me. I put this in my GTD system and follow up if the person doesn’t get back to me as agreed on. I keep comments in the notes area that include date and time of the action I took to stay on top of the task.

By: Heather Ross

Heather Ross — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:07:04 +0000

I use OmniFocus and often assign a “due date” to an item that I’m waiting for. I’m notified on that due date and send and email or make a phone call to kindly remind them that I’m waiting on them for something. I then add a quick “sent follow-up email” or something like that in the Notes area of that action entry.

By: Greedyzebra

Greedyzebra — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:09:53 +0000

An important tool in the Love & Logic child discipline strategies that I’ve applied to my work is: The only person I can control is myself.

So, applied here, my suggestion is to tell people what YOU will do based on their behavior.

An example: I needed feedback from folks regarding whether or not some of their documents needed to be deleted from a network share. My first email (“Please let me know if there are documents we need to keep!”) was basically ignored. However, when I changed my approach (“I will be deleting any documents that I haven’t been told to keep by 5pm Friday”) I had responses from everyone within an hour or so and the project was complete.

I would also point out how this approach helps others get things done. In my previous example, there were folks who didn’t mind that their documents were deleted. With the “I will be doing unless I hear otherwise by ” approach, there was no action required on their part to accomplish something.

This approach works great with a boss who’s terrible at responding to email. He gets a lot and has mentioned he appreciates getting messages that require him to answer only when it’s necessary.