Making progress stick

The Lazy man's archenemy is work done twice. To someone who wants to do the least amount of work for the greatest gain, doubling that work for no extra gain is revolting. So how do you avoid covering the same ground more than once?

Mark your trail
Take notes in every meeting and publish them ASAP. Volunteer to take notes and publish them for everyone and you will receive two immediate benefits:

1. You will gain everyone's appreciation for saving them the trouble of taking notes.


2. You will own the official memory of what happened in that meeting. While I don't recommend trying to record things that didn't happen, you will have the advantage of being able to phrase things as you would have said them, eliminating any gray areas that could cause trouble later.

Taking notes is especially useful when asking someone to agree to something they don't like, because nine times out of ten they will conveniently forget the disagreeable part of the decision. If you work with anyone who habitually says, "I never said that," or "I don't remember agreeing to that," you can either start publishing notes or start buying Maalox by the case.

This short-term memory loss appears to grow stronger with each successive career advancement, so if you are dealing with anyone at VP level or above, sharpen your pencil.

Learn to write
This is the corollary to the previous point. The ability to communicate clearly and concisely in writing will immediately separate you from the crowd, because no one seems to do it anymore. If you can show people that reading what you wrote will be worth their while, you can make decisions more quickly, reduce the number and duration of meetings you have to attend, and make your decisions stick. Written communication has the immediate benefit of recording a decision process so that you don't have to go back later and try to remember what was said. Email and discussion groups also allow people to contribute to the decision process whenever they have time, so you don't have to wait a week to put them all in one room in order to get their attention. Build credibility with your writing, then drive people to make decisions in writing, asynchronously, by email or discussion thread.

Silence = Assent
Make it clear from the beginning of a project that there will be one decision-making process, and not participating means agreeing with the decisions made by those who did. If someone is too busy to take part in the process but has to approve the decisions, arrange the reviews in advance. Look out for the executive team member who never responds to email or comes to project meetings. Hunt that person down before you make any major decisions, to ensure that he doesn't hunt you down 3 weeks later.

Make a decision
Push to a decision, any decision, before making a decision to make a decision at a later date. Better to settle even part of an issue today than to spend an hour or more of everyone's day with nothing to show for it.