Barbara Wells, Managing Partner at Minor and Brown, has found a solution to a problem that plagues many managers in professional firms.

Work delegated to busy junior professionals (attorneys, in Barbara’s case; accountants, architects, designers — you name it — in other situations), gets put into a pending pile. Little if any progress is made on completing the work until shortly before it is due. Time needed to complete the work is underestimated, and completing the work becomes extremely stressful.

Clients, whom the junior professionals may never have met, can be disappointed. The manager is frustrated because explaining the reasons for delays to clients is never fun. The manager is also frustrated because she has work of her own to complete, and does not want to spend her time checking up on others.

Many managers have procrastination problems of their own, largely because they have so many high priorities to juggle. The common problem that “management is a series of interruptions, interrupted by interruptions,“ causes them to arrive very early or stay very late to try to get their own work done.

Barbara’s responsibilities include monitoring attorney progress, workflow, marketing, cashflow, collections and billing, as well as strategic planning and staff management in a firm that includes 13 attorneys. Almost everything was going smoothly, except for the workflow monitoring. When challenged to create a system to make everyone responsible for their own work, she devised a brief, mandatory, weekly “Tasklists Anonymous“ meeting.

Her system is simple. Every task that is assigned to an attorney is placed on a list — a common practice in professional firms. However, Barbara takes this several steps further. Based on the premise that all work should be completed within 2-4 weeks, each professional‘s list is divided into three parts.
1. Tasks that must be done by next week.
2. Tasks that must be done by 2 weeks (from now) and/or should be done next week.
3. Tasks that must be done by 3 weeks (from now) and/or should be done by 2 weeks.

Her rule is that every task should move up to the next higher category every week! The way the rule is enforced is that everyone, including herself, presents their updated lists at the weekly “Tasklists Anonymous“ meeting. No penalties are necessary. Social pressure is enough. The work progresses, and Barbara has more time to devote to other priorities.

Coaching tip: When a problem persists, look for a system to that will solve it permanently.

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[tags]Business Communication, Coaching,Human Resources, Leadership,Management[/tags]

written by Laurie Weiss