Tracking Tasks

It was a typical setting. We went into a meeting to discuss one some issues, came up with some solutions or suggestions, as well as some action points. One of the young analyst was then tasked to track progress of the action items, and the meeting came to a close.

The next day, the analyst sent out the tracksheet, nicely categorized with the various person-in-charge of each task, with planned start and end dates. It was all fine, until I looked at the status column which indicated some items had been flagged as “Closed”. I was curious, as I knew for a fact that the tasks were still outstanding, and thus approached my young colleague to find out.

He duly informed me that he had set the items as “Closed” because he had discussed and brought the attention of the person-in-charge to the matter at hand. He explained that it makes no sense to leave the status as open, and we have to trust the person to do his job. I smiled at that remark, and replied, “Ok I just wanted to know the logic behind.”.

The following week, this same young colleague took a couple of days leave, and I happened to be in the position to take over some of his tasks. The same tracksheet had not been updated since, and I quickly set all the statuses back to “Open”, then went about the unenviable task of chasing down people to complete each and every task. After he came back from his leave, some of the items were still pending closure.

I hope the young chap learnt that in a perfect world, the ideal situation he described was possible. But not in our practical world of humans. There is always something else getting in the way – a more urgent task, a new initiative, the car needs to be brought to the workshop, the dog needs to be walked, the house needs to be cleaned, there is a new drama series on TV… people lose their focus and sometimes all it requires is a nudge in the right direction to get them moving in the right direction.