Chasing up tasks: How best to manage it?

[David McLeary]

Here's what I believe is a relatively simple question that maybe has a complex answer!

When your business starts to grow and you are dependent on other people - whether your own staff or outsourced teams - you need to build up confidence that key tasks are being delivered. Delegation is all well and good but should we be concerned with task delivery from a quality point of view?

So with task delegation under control withing your business, what do you find the best way to ensure those tasks are delivered? What mechanism (automated, manual etc) do you empoy to monitor and chase up tasks?

 

[The Byre]

I do not monitor tasks, I monitor the money and staff are paid according to their profitability.

 

[comperio]

This will probably depend on which type of business you are in, and I am in SEO.

What I do is monitor staff's productivity, and this comes naturally. It is easy to see if staff is slow or fast, good or bad quality. Then we help them improve their speed and their quality of work, with regular training.

Also staff has to communicate regularly on the progress they have achieved. Over time we know how much work a person can produce, and salary also will vary depending on this.

 

[lazypbx]

I find chat bots are a very efficient way to manage task lists.

If you are using slack you could try to-do - https://slack.com/apps/A0HBTUUPK-to-do
I'm sure there are equivalent for telegram etc..

 

[David McLeary]

Thanks for those useful answers. And I love the focus on productivity and keeping count of the money. In effect, this is the best form of trusted delegation and IMHO where businesses should be.

Let's say you asked a new employee to call an important prospect at 10am but you get a call from at 10.30 to say the prospect hasn't heard anything. What would you have wished you had in place to prevent that oversight? I'm guessing some might see this as a training or even disciplinary matter of some form, which is fine but I'm thinking procedurally here.

Thanks again for all the comments so far

 

[The Byre]

We don't work that way. If they fail to call a prospective client, they will effect their own profitability. i.e. no call: no pay.

That way, I don't have to chase anybody.

 

[ffox]

Delegation is the assignment of any responsibility or authority to another person (normally from a manager to a subordinate) to carry out specific activities. It is one of the core concepts of managementleadership. However, the person who delegated the work remains accountable for the outcome of the delegated work.

Let's say you asked a new employee to call an important prospect at 10am but you get a call from at 10.30 to say the prospect hasn't heard anything.

The key to the definition of delegation is in the final paragraph. If the call to the customer has not been completed by the designated time something has gone wrong. If you weren't aware that the customer had not been called until the customer told you, have a total failure.

I come across so many situations where the customer has to be told "Sorry, it won't happen again...", or "Sorry, that person has been disciplined....".

Ideally, it should never happen. The requirement starts with training. You don't tell a new employee to make a call, you train a new employee to follow a process and record the result. This becomes even more important when the person fulfilling the task is external to your organisation. A well organised person will also oversee the tasks of those beside and above their position, prompting as required. If you think about that, it's what a good old fashioned secretary, or PA used to do in the days before computers.

The result log can be recorded in many different ways, by many different means, from a pen and ink entry into a log, to task management software. Whichever way you do it you must be able to see at a glance what has been done and by whom.

In any process you can then identify the key tasks and monitor those only, to avoid micromanagement.

The best software will also be able to send text or email on key task imminence or completion

If you should decide to use computer monitoring, the software you chose will depend very much on what you do.

Most email/calendar suites have task management built in, if you want more sophistication you can Google Team Task Management Software.

Personally, I use Office 365 Teams. It's simple to deploy and manage, and very good at what it does.