I used to have a sign in my office that read “poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” You have no idea how true that feels today. In this overly distracted, overly committed and underwhelmingly organized world it should be required reading by anyone in business.
Today I stress over a task that should have required nothing more than my design sensibility and the two weeks I gave myself to finish it. In its entirety. Completely. With Edits. Final. As it is the front end person didn’t hold his end of the bargain. Not only did this person completely neglect the agreed upon deadline but they were completely unapologetic.
So, here I am on a Friday afternoon scrambling to START a project that should have been in the final editing stages. My other work still looms as well and I have no idea how I am going to manage it all. Just because one person thought his time was more valuable than everyone else.
It’s hard to work with people like this. They always put themselves, their tasks, obligations and inability to manage their own schedules ahead of every one else. It makes for a lousy business arrangement and an even lousier team member.
So while I can’t do anything about this today, I can change the way I do business with this person tomorrow. NO, is a complete sentence and, short of plastering another sign on my wall, social media and website, I will have to be clear that deadlines are an important part of teamwork and not meeting them an indication of an individual agenda instead of a collective one.
Unthink this: where are you allowing the agenda of others to interfere with your own?