🔁 #8 Following Through
Ever get the feeling you're getting your signals crossed? Well then I've got some great ⚡️Next Steps to help you with 📚 Following Through - straight out of my own current Leadership Plan.
Over the next three editions, I'd like to share with you the current Leadership Plan that I've put in place for my first 90 days in my new job. Leadership Plans don't always change every quarter - I've historically worked on a six-month rotation - however, onboarding calls for accelerated development and I'm focusing on three main pillars of development..
📬 Mixed messages
At the end of last year, I was working on our quarterly sales presentation improvements. It was the fourth quarter in a row that I had led this process, though we refined it each quarter based on the previous quarter's learnings. This quarter, there was a recently arrived leader joining us who would be taking ownership over a non-insignificant percentage of the final slides, but I was confident, given our previous opportunities to work together, that the collaboration would go smoothly.
And for the most part, it did. Until it didn't.
I'm not exactly sure where we got our wires crossed, but a week after our latest sync nothing was moving forward. Finally one team member said they were waiting on me, I said I was waiting on someone else, who in turn said they, too, were waiting on me. Uh-oh. I dropped the ball.
I had assumed that, with the arrival of the new team member, they would be carrying the baton from step N to step N+1; however, when step N came around it was already so ingrained in my head that I didn't bother making sure the ⚡️ Next Steps were clear.
"So, what are the next steps?"
Ultimately, the deck got finished a week later than expected and we were all happy with the product, but the experience left many stakeholders unclear as to whether they could count on me, whether they could delegate tasks & processes to me.
And that's the real Blindspot when it comes to Following through: it's not about execution - if you have the job, there is a general belief that you can execute - it's about delegation.
Your capacity to be delegated larger and larger responsibilities is entirely linked to your dependability when it comes to following through.
Your ability to delegate larger and larger responsibilities to your team, too, is entirely linked to your ability to follow up with them consistently (but not by looking over their shoulder every 5 minutes)
⚡️ Next Steps
"Here's what I've understood in terms of Next Steps. _______. Is that what you've understood?"
Next Steps are as simple as they sound: they are a list of tasks - deadlines, deliverables & directly responsible individuals (DRIs) - that come out of a discussion with others or an internal reflection.
Next Steps are how I end 99% of meetings (and the other 1% are when I forget): I ask for them, I share the ones I've noted, and I get a handshake on them.
On Notion, my Meeting Notes are linked to my To-Do List, allowing me to create Next Steps directly inside a meeting, ensuring that I follow-up.
One of the things I've learned over the years is that I could replace meeting notes entirely with a list of next steps and get a clear picture of the output of a meeting. At least in an ideal world. For now, I still share meeting notes, but I put Next Steps at the top so they are visible - the meeting notes just explain how the Next Steps came about.
📚 Learning to follow through
There are a number of books that are tangentially relevant to Following Through:
Atomic Habits is a great guide to building habits that stick. James Clear's newsletter & social media profiles are also gold for micro-inspiration.
Marie Poulin's professional Notion Mastery content has been a huge inspiration to me in building a great system inside Notion that ensures I follow through. Check out "Tracking Goals + Practices" if you've got 20 minutes.
However, this week I'd like to recommend a book that I'm going to start listening to this week - Following Through, by Steve Levinson. I was seduced by the 1998's premise, and I'll leave you with the inside jacket pitch from the author:
[This book] will show you why facing the truth about the mind's faulty wiring is a key to achieving greater success in virtually every area of life. Following Through will teach you bold new strategies for consistently turning good intentions into life-improving action.
If you give it a read/listen, or if you've read it before, let me know. Or if you have another book recommendation - I'm going back and forth on the train once a week so I have time to listen to books again.
🚦 Start / Stop / Continues
🟢 Start asking at the end of meetings "Is there anything you need me to follow-up on?"
🟢 Start checking-in proactively on ongoing projects to make sure no one's waiting on you.
🟢 Start renegotiating deadlines proactively, as soon as you suspect the deadline is at risk.
🟡 Continue defining weekly priorities every Sunday after reviewing the previous week's tasks, meetings, topics & stakeholders.
🟡 Continue asking incisive questions that encourage self-reflection and accountability.
🟡 Continue sharing notes from meetings for the whole company to see if they wish.
🔴 Stop committing on the fly with impulsive Yes's.
🔴 Stop attending meetings just because you were invited. Have an agenda.