How to Get Your Team to Stop Dropping the Ball and Follow-Through
Follow-through is the engine of progress.
Poor follow-through, poor results.
3 dangers of poor follow-through:
- People don’t respect you.
- Procrastination drains your energy like a dripping faucet.
- Team performance drops. People end up waiting on others.
7 reasons people don’t follow-through:
#1. People stop following through when you don’t follow up.
You devalue follow-through you when you don’t notice progress. (Yes, people should follow-through without being noticed. So?)
If it’s worth bringing up, it’s worthy of follow-up.
#2. People don’t follow-through when you assign busy work.
I had a boss who assigned “cover your a** work (CYA).” I never did CYA work until she asked to see it.
#3. People don’t follow-through because you’re a meddling control freak.
Everything must be done YOUR way. But people tend to resist being treated like robots.
#4. People don’t follow-through when they are over-booked and stressed-out.
“More for less,” eventually becomes a losing strategy.
#5. People don’t follow-through because they avoid conflict. Make it easy for team members to bring up awkward issues.
Listen to problems when they’re small and easy to solve.
#6. People don’t follow-through because you confuse them. Instruction or direction isn’t clear.
#7. People don’t follow-through when initiative is punished. People wait for you to tell them what to do.
How to handoff so people follow-through:
Peter Bregman* observes that lack of follow-through is the result of poor handoff.
- Where is this project on your list of priorities?
- What’s the next step?
- What’s the timeline for taking the next step?
- What do you need to bring up before we end our meeting? Any concerns? Possible issues?
- Who needs to know about our plan? Who is going to tell them? How?
- When is our follow-up meeting?
- How can I help?
What might leaders do that hampers follow-through?
How might leaders help teams or individuals follow-through?
*Adapted from, “The Secret to Ensuring Follow-Through,” Peter Bregman
Excellent post. I experienced many of these from bosses in the past and strive to avoid these same behaviors now that I am the boss. This post reminds me to stop, remember what it was like on the other side, and encourage follow through the right way.
Thanks Duane. Your comment reminds me that one benefit of having a lousy boss is learning what NOT to do. 🙂
Some might be successful if they keep doing what the can do and stop shooting themselves in the foot.
An interesting post with good management lesson!
Good follow-through is needed to ensure the planned progress and completion of a task in time. People become much more serious in handling things carefully and remain committed on its satisfactory delivery. Poor follow-throgh results in a lethargic, care free approach! It promotes non-accountability and pushes the non-productive work environment.
The best will be to make people responsible to fulfil the tasks with time-bound schedules and report the progress update. Immediate bosses too need to take out time to check on the progress and guide people with encouragement. It can be the prime management lesson to instil a spirit of follow-through with self-imposed discipline.
Thank you Dr. Asher. The idea that giving updates helps with follow-through is important. A quick update meeting doesn’t have to be punishment. It’s simply, where are you on this project? What’s next? How can I help? Let me know if you need anything?
Even, I mean the same thing! Bosses need to show an empathy and help people to enjoy their work with the needed guidance. It is possible in a progressive, caring work culture. At times, you need to promote a healthy competition among people by informing what others do and how they perform with good follow-through process.
This is a very interesting conversation! I like the comments, too! I would add that in my experience, some people don’t follow up because they are unsure of how to complete the task and are afraid to speak up. Hence, procrastination as the task does not get completed and unless the supervisor follows up, he is unaware of the status.
Thanks Lisa. One of the best things leaders do is instill confidence in others. You are so right that of follow-through can indicate lack of confidence.
Here’s a leadership question, “What can I do to bolster your confidence?”
Very true! We have seen such things in two cases in India. One is when the boss is incompetent and is afraid of getting exposed with some intervention or there is a unionized staff. In other case, there are public organizations [Govt. organization] where the work culture is non-commital and unaccountable to a larger extent.
The best motivator for follow thru is a mutual understanding of where the task lies on the critical path …
that it is something that needs to be done before something else can be started (and usually by someone else, thus the updates are actually a functional coordination exercise and not just “checking in.”).
Mutual comprehension of the critical path (seeing one’s significance in the big picture) has a tendency to minimize busy work/CYA and keep the focus of effort and resources on the essentials: scope, cost and schedule,
Which in turn tends strongly to success (achievement) over merely process (only “doing” something).
And tends to minimize interpersonal and corporate politics.
Thanks Rurbane. Things get clear when we know the result we seek and where we are along the path.
There are some interesting motivational aspects to knowing where you are on the path. In the beginning, look how far you’ve come. Toward the end, look how far you have to go. I got this from Daniel Pinks book, When.
And the final 10% is always the hardest … knowing “Good enough” and letting go vs. continuing past the cost/benefit to perfecting something that doesn’t need it anymore 🙂
Thus spake the recovering lover of unrequitted Perfection.
Thanks! I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, “Polishing the turd.” Pretty gross. But sometimes it just isn’t worth the effort. Choose another battle and move on. In some cases, you can come back and make improvements later, if you really feel the need to go the last 10%.
You forgot: 8: People don’t follow-through when they lack passion for the job and activities they are assigned. When this happens the 7 ?? to help work through the followup do not really work, most notably, “How can I help” falls on deaf ears because “I” can’t develop passion in another they have to want it, work it and make it happen.
Thanks Roger. Great add. You made me think about getting the right people on the bus. The “right” people enjoy the work and want to improve their performance. They say you can’t coach passion.
This topic is important for leaders high up in an organization to understand why efficiency/productivity may not be as high as desired. It’s not unusual to see an organization set many goals to reach but don’t either get too detailed in the plan on how to achieve or do not have any structured way to follow-up. This happens as mentioned earlier due to not wanting to be seen as a micromanager but if it’s standard to hold project status meetings, it becomes an expectation. Employees no longer need to be asked where they are at because the roll-up to upper leaders will show who’s closing the loop on items and who’s not. It’s important for leaders to follow-through even with little items, it shows employees commitment to the group strategy.
Thanks Mohamed. You remind me that rituals and patterns are important for organizations. If follow-up is part of the process then people don’t feel like you’re picking on them when you follow-up.
Yes! The organizational norms, can be helpful in these situations.