« Choosing your Tool | Main | How to make GTD stick »
August 10, 2005
Tracking delegation
Many times in GTD workflow coachings I see managers hold back delegating things to their staff and direct reports because they don't trust their systems will remind them of things they have handed off.
If you are the one delegating, track what you hand off on a "Waiting For" list. I include the person's name, what I'm waiting for and the date I started waiting. I am currently waiting for our IT guy Eric to fix my wireless card which broke yesterday. Here's what that looks like on my Waiting For list:
Eric - fix my wireless card - 8/9
Even though I trust Eric implicitly to get things done, I want my list to track this item, not my mind. I also don't have a due date on their because there really isn't a due date--it just needs to be done as soon as it can be done. This Friday during my weekly review, I'll scan down the Waiting For list. If that item is still unresolved, it may generate a call or email to Eric asking what's up if I haven't heard anything by then. Or, I may see that 8/9 date which tells me that I really haven't been waiting that long and I can wait a few more days. Either way, I can move on to whatever else I need to be handling and trust that Eric is on top of it.
Posted by Kelly at August 10, 2005 02:03 PM
Comments
i came to this practice on my own too. I might add that i use as shortcut key that gives the 'time-date stamp'. Full disclosure : I use an apple-mac with entourage to manage my GTD processes
Posted by: Vijay Raman at August 14, 2005 12:23 AM
Thanks Vijay. I use Palm Desktop on my PC, which USED to do time/date stamp but it's a known bug that it doesn't work in the latest version of Palm Desktop. But it was such a handy thing to have when entering things like this.
Posted by: Kelly at August 14, 2005 03:47 PM
My wireless card is fixed by the way. It was a Windows Update that broke it, as it did for several other ThinkPad users, and it took uninstalling the card and reinstalling it for them all to play nice again.
Posted by: Kelly at August 16, 2005 02:08 PM
Kelly, you can use Activewords to implement a date/time stamp.
Eric
Posted by: Eric Mack at August 19, 2005 05:03 PM
Can you expand on using Activewords to date/time stamp records on the Palm Desktop current version.
Thx
Posted by: Robin Rodgers at August 2, 2006 04:34 PM
Robin, ActiveWords has a Time and a Date & Time stamp. You can also download a variety of stamping addins, free, from the ActiveWords site.
I create an ActiveWord for TS (Time Stamp). I aslo have shortcuts that will create a task and populate the date & time.
FYI: the ActiveWords site has, I believe, a free add-in for Palm Desktop that ActiveWords enables the palm Desktop.
I hope this helps.
Eric
Eric Mack
eProductivity Specialist
http://www.ica.com
Posted by: Eric Mack at August 2, 2006 07:51 PM
