Follow Through on Everything

I just finished an interview with a possible intern and this ordinary event became a good lesson for following through. Around Christmas time I was asked to reach out to a possible intern for the following summer as a favor for one of our board members. I reached out right away but we both agreed it would be better to talk in the new year.

So I took a note to reach out again in the new year. Towards the end of January I was trying to clean up my todos so I reached back out. We met and had a very interesting conversation.

I was able to report back to my boss 3 months after he had asked. He was pleasantly surprised and happy that he could report back to the board member about our efforts. This only happened because I had a system to make sure I was following through on even the simplest of requests.

One of the most important things you can do as a manager or really as an employee is make sure that you are following through on what you say you will do.

Nothing builds trust more than to keep your promises. Nothing breaks it down faster than to not follow through.

As a developer I could keep everything I needed to do in my head. I literally never wrote anything down. As a manager I have to write everything down. There is just too much to keep in my head at one time.

So I developed a system.

Here is what I do.

I have two places I keep notes. I have my one on one notes for each of my direct reports. This is helpful because you always have a place to check back on notes from previous conversations.

I also use it as a place to put topics I want to talk about at our next meeting. This allows me to not bug people while they are coding and wait for a time when they are already meeting with me. If it is not pressing I save it for the one on one and when I am about to go into a one on one I pull up my notes and already have some talking points.

In addition to the one on one notes, I have one single todo list. I keep it pretty clean. If it builds up past 10 items I take some time to knock it down. I use outlook's todo list but I have also done it in notepad.

This is how I keep my promises. If I say I will do something it goes on the list and doesn't come off till its done or I have communicated back to the person why I was unable to do it for them. I read the list every morning after I have cleaned up my inbox and I take action on what I can.

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