The Trouble with Follow-Through in the Workplace

Tell me you haven't been guilty of one or all of the following:

• You meet and spend time with a dozen people at an industry conference and diligently take all of their business cards. You pledge to follow up with them within the next few days -- but you never do.


• During lunch one afternoon, you and a coworker brainstorm the beginnings of a new product that could make the company millions and turn the two of you into the office darlings. But then you don't get around to putting a project plan in place and the competition launches a similar product to the one you had envisioned -- to great success -- a few months later.


• You leave a weekly planning meeting full of priority items that you announce you'll get cracking on right away. But by Friday afternoon, all you've managed to accomplish is a reprioritization of your priority list. Most of those scheduled to-do items simply didn't get done.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Just why aren't we very good at follow-through?

Here are my thoughts, with an assist from my Twitter friends:

• Brainstorming Is Sexy;  Execution Isn't: Sitting around a table with our workmates and coming up with ideas in every-suggestion-is-a-good-suggestion fashion for 30 or 60 minutes allows us to dream about what could be. It's fun and energizing and requires no real commitment. But overcoming eventual objections to your idea from other factions of the company and having to compromise your pristine vision by laying out a rigorous step-by-step action plan that's chock-full of deadlines is the hard part, and it's where we usually fall down.


• We Have a Warped Sense of Time:  We continue to be fooled by the notion that we'll somehow have more time next week or next month than we have today. And yet, when next week and next month finally roll around, our calendars are just as packed as ever.


• We're Too Scatterbrained: Our always-on, always-connected mentality combined with the ever-present tools of technology can -- and often do -- help us do our jobs more efficiently than ever before. But many of us are also just flat-out distracted and overwhelmed by these tools, and we struggle to keep up with the frenetic pace we've subscribed to. As a result, we either can't remember our original promises, or when we can, we just can't get organized enough to fulfill them.

What's Your Take?

What would you add to my list? Why do you think we often fail miserably in following through on our workplace pledges, promises and plans? And perhaps most important, what are your suggested solutions?

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