Discussion Forum > What to do with Dismissed items which just refuse to die?
Apply Mark's little-and-often principle. Avoid the priority trap because there's really only two kinds of tasks: those that need be done and those that don't. So when other things crowd out this important task because of urgency, continue to set aside a little time to work on nonurgent stuff. To do otherwise is just a recipe for turning nonurgent tasks into urgent.
July 10, 2011 at 17:04 |
Alan Baljeu
Alan Baljeu
Paul:
I've come across this problem often when advising small businesses. My position on this has always been that, when delegating a task, if you don't say when you want it done by then you don't want it done at all.
I would advise you to always insist when people task you that they must give you a deadline. Make it clear that if they don't give it a deadline then it won't get done. (You might want to rephrase that slightly - but the message must be clear!)
I've come across this problem often when advising small businesses. My position on this has always been that, when delegating a task, if you don't say when you want it done by then you don't want it done at all.
I would advise you to always insist when people task you that they must give you a deadline. Make it clear that if they don't give it a deadline then it won't get done. (You might want to rephrase that slightly - but the message must be clear!)
July 11, 2011 at 13:56 |
Mark Forster
Mark Forster
"Make it clear that if they don't give it a deadline then it won't get done."
Or...
"If they don't give you a deadline, incoming and shifting priorities will likely mean that THIS task will continue to get postponed indefinitely to the point that it will never see fruition."
... not that I've ever had to have this conversation with my boss before. ;)
Or...
"If they don't give you a deadline, incoming and shifting priorities will likely mean that THIS task will continue to get postponed indefinitely to the point that it will never see fruition."
... not that I've ever had to have this conversation with my boss before. ;)
July 11, 2011 at 17:20 |
jFenter
jFenter
Thanks chaps. That's an angle that I hadn't considered, to be honest - around these here parts deadlines are more usually used to beat people around the head with but I think it's worth a try at turning the tables... jFenter's suggestion seems like a nicely phrased approach.
@Alan Baljeu - I would tend, in my more cynical moments, to suggest that actually there is a third class of task: those which in the wider scheme of reality have no need to be done, but for which one or more project managers have expressed a desperate requirement sufficient to get them onto someone's to-do list, often for reasons which have little to do with making fundamental advances in delivering the project. You won't be surprised to hear that there are some of those kind of tasks in my zombie list!
@Alan Baljeu - I would tend, in my more cynical moments, to suggest that actually there is a third class of task: those which in the wider scheme of reality have no need to be done, but for which one or more project managers have expressed a desperate requirement sufficient to get them onto someone's to-do list, often for reasons which have little to do with making fundamental advances in delivering the project. You won't be surprised to hear that there are some of those kind of tasks in my zombie list!
July 11, 2011 at 21:46 |
Paul Taylor
Paul Taylor
Ah for those tasks I recommend emphasizing little and de-emphasizing often :-)
But for the truly important tasks that everyone else belittles I stand by what I said above.
But for the truly important tasks that everyone else belittles I stand by what I said above.
July 12, 2011 at 1:18 |
Alan Baljeu
Alan Baljeu
This issue may be more to do with my managers than with me, and the way in which they operate. I'm a 'shared resource' with expertise related to a core business system at work, and there are currently multiple separate workstreams which require my input and involvement - support, a modernisation thread, a thread dealing with accounting infrastructure, a second accounting thread aiming to deliver sooner than the other one, a historic data cleanup thread, etc etc. Basically if it involves the core business system I'm probably involved somewhere. As a reviewer and 'quality gate' I also end up helping to serialise the changes to the system into coherent releases while trying to keep the system functioning operationally!
This results in frequent situations where overall priorities are unclear or fluid, and there is a degree of tension between the different workstreams in terms of having my input. Tasks tend to end up on my plate and then something higher priority will come up, or someone becomes blocked and needs unblocking urgently, or management decree that x is now more important than y, or an urgent support issue comes up and needs sorting yesterday. All of these things tend to push in as interruptions.
The end result is that there are a number of tasks which, while necessary, never 'stand out' because there is always something higher priority. These tasks are regularly dismissed from one page, but on review I end up having to re-enter them on the current page - sometimes rephrased - because I have been committed to doing them but nobody can agree that they are important enough to actually do right now, and there's always something else which stands out more. I am essentially not at liberty to dismiss these tasks because I am not 'master of my own destiny' in respect of them. I've tried pushing back up the line, but the answer is almost always 'we need that!' so they linger, get dismissed and reincarnate on a later page on roughly a weekly cycle. Eventually they are either (grudgingly) prioritised so I can actually work on them, go *BANG* (sometimes with spectacular fallout!) or are overtaken by events.
I've come to the conclusion that this is symptomatic of a somewhat dysfunctional organisation - no news there! - but I'm wondering whether other people have this problem and, if so, how they have dealt with it?
Any suggestions gratefully received!