Following through is a critical skill for managers at all levels—whether you’re
working on a seven-figure development project or simply completing your
department's performance reviews.Managers who are poor at follow-through inadvertently cause a myriad of problems: botched projects, broken trust with employees and higher-ups, wasted money and time, and even layoffs or firings.
Larraine Segil, a Los Angeles management consultant who teaches executive education at the California Institute of Technology, has worked with companies like Sun, Hewlett-Packard, and Starbucks. She defines follow-through skills as interpretation of the goal and implementation.
In her view, failure to follow through results from a communications breakdown. This can happen when the person who initiates a project or goal is not the one implementing it. As the instructions trickle down through the ranks, inevitably, something is lost and the project goes awry or fades away altogether.
Constant initiative shifts can cause a loss of focus
As you well know, managers are being asked to do more (and more) with less. To boot, managers must juggle the ever-changing priorities of their organizations. CEOs often cast a wide net of initiatives across the company, and when they change the business direction, it affects all those projects—including those under the IT helm, explained leadership psychologist Susan Battley, PhD, a Long Island, NY-based organizational consultant.
This attention-deficit workplace is often worse within IT departments, where big egos, aggressive personalities, and top performers can create a culture of demand and instant gratification. Managers are enthusiastic at the beginning of a project, but before the midway point—when they really need to pay attention—they lose interest and move on to something else.
Keeping the house in order
There is no secret methodology to keeping projects on track and following through on them, but it requires energy and involvement. It also involves some specific personality and professional skills.
To become an expert at following through, you’ll first need to get organized. Keeping task lists, holding regular meetings, and learning how to delegate are the basic steps for any manager. And while it sounds simple, this can be a constant challenge for managers.
"It's often where leaders and organizations fall down, unwittingly,” said Battley.
Along those same lines, according to Segil, to follow through successfully you need to do the following:
- Organize thoughts and activities well
- Take time out to reflect
- Not operate in crisis mode
- Know who needs to be in the loop
- Have a fundamental desire to complete things
Mike Hugo, CIO of Chicago-based Network Services Company, is clear on another aspect of follow-through success: Don't overbook your staff. A common mistake of IT managers, he said, is to blur the lines between development and operations people.
For instance, Hugo would never ask one of his help-desk workers to work "part-time” as a coder—something a CEO might think is a good idea when resources are tight. The IT manager has to be able to explain why that scenario isn’t good for IT or for the company.
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