Pages

Monday, December 6, 2010

People Who Never Finish Reports Until Deadlines

Exhibitions, conferences, seminars, etc... Issuing write-ups on every event you go to can sometimes seem like too much trouble spent on something that isn't immediately helpful. Even if you send them to everyone on the company mailing list, it's not like everyone actually reads them.

That said, when you are about to go to a new and particular event, it's nice to be able to browse write-ups of the same or similar events in the past. Little tips like, how to get to the venue, how worthwhile it was, etc., are suddenly useful. As a company it is beneficial to keep a database of event write-ups, or even simple memos.




Unfortunately, in most organizations these types of workflows tend to NOT flow. In other words, employees know write-ups aren't the essential portion of their workload, so they put them off until later.

The solution for this is deadlines. Setting arbitrary deadlines significantly increases the rate of completed tasks.