When important work needs to be done, make sure you don’t undermine your deadlines. It’s a form of organizational self-sabotage that can impact the bottom line.
While deadlines can represent a great way of making sure things get done, in a timely fashion, you may use them incorrectly. Have you made it impossible for your team to achieve them because you’re undermining the process?
I’m well versed in deadlines, having spent more than a decade in TV news. In this world, deadlines are absolute. If your story is supposed to lead the 5 p.m. news, then it has to be the lead report.
In order to meet this deadline, you would have to make lots of little adjustments. You had a plan and you were in control of its implementation.
For instance, if I had one hour to gather interviews, write a script, have that script edited, and then present the story in a live report, then I knew I did not want to spend 30 minutes, asking questions to the interview subjects. That would give too much time to one phase of the project.
Overall you had a clear mission and you understood how you needed to invest your limited time. While you may not face the fast-approaching challenges of a newsroom, these tips may help make sure you don’t undermine your deadlines:
Stop Adding Things
Imagine, you’ve been given a deadline of three days to walk twenty miles. You would calculate how to tackle the trip. For instance, you could try to do it with two days of walking, ten miles each day.
You know this much walking will take a lot of time, so you won’t be able to do much else. That’s okay because you’re in pursuit of your deadline. At this point, you have a clear vision of what you need to do.
Everything is okay until someone decides your 20 mile walk also needs to have you pick up some food from a restaurant that is not on your route. Suddenly, the distance you have to travel has grown and getting the trip completed, by the deadline, just got harder.
You may receive two or three additional requests that affect your ability to complete the 20 mile walk. On their own, no one request is unreasonable or out of line but when added up, they pose a tremendous challenge to your ability to meet your deadline.
As a result, a task you thought was possible has become a lot more complicated and you may not be able to complete it.
You Don’t Understand Time
In TV news, it’s possible multiple important stories may happen at the same time. The challenge is they may be nowhere near one another.
Just about every reporter has received a frantic call from the newsroom, asking them to be in two places at once. Usually the conversation ends with some sort of compromise, favoring one story over the other.
While it’s frustrating not every story can be covered in the desired way, these talks acknowledge an impossible situation. In your workplace, are people given extremely challenging workloads that may be impossible to complete?
Often, the people assigning the tasks may not understand how long it takes to do things. And certain things just can’t be done faster.
It’s smart for both parties to go over the assignments and identify any concerns. This way, changes can be made early. If you wait too long, the deadline will be missed and nothing can be done about it.
Deadlines Are Seen as Flexible
As a leader, have you gotten into the habit of pushing back deadlines? Sometimes this may be unavoidable but it can also undermine the urgency to get the job done.
Make sure you communicate when the work needs to be done and why it needs to be completed by that time. This understanding can help employees adjust their schedules and priorities accordingly.
If you train people to think you’ll always give them more time, you will undermine your deadlines.
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