© Jan Jasper; 2001-2010
If you delegate tasks to people and need some help remembering what's due when, try keeping records on a form such as the one below. If you have trouble getting your staff to meet their deadlines, setting a date for an Interim Checkpoint reminds you to check in with them to see how it's going and make sure the task is being handled. If you learn of a problem early, you can take corrective action before it's too late.
The "If Late, Why?" column is a place to jot down problems that come up. Over time patterns will emerge, revealing issues you didn't even know about. Once you know the root cause of a problem you can begin to solve it. For example, you may find that certain team members habitually underestimate how long things take, or they don't plan ahead. It could be that people are given inadequate or wrong information and are either afraid to ask for help - or don't know they need to! An unreliable vendor may be causing projects to be consistently late. Perhaps you didn't have buy-in from some key people. When you keep records, over time, about why things are late, you can learn some surprising - and very useful - information about the root causes.
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