Bit Literacy - Mark Hurst [22]
The pipeline of followup looks like this:
You send someone a question to answer or a todo to accomplish.
They send you back a confirmation (acknowledging that they understand the question or accept the todo). If they don’t confirm within a certain amount of time, you send followups until they do.
They send you a completion (either answering the question or otherwise showing that the todo is done) or cancellation (declining the question or todo, presumably giving a reason, possibly directing you to ask someone else). If they don’t complete or cancel within some amount of time, you send followups until they do.
There are two situations, then, that call for followup:
Confirmation: When you send someone a todo, you must follow up to make sure “they’ve got it,” promising to deliver completion within a certain amount of time.
Completion: If someone doesn’t complete in time, you must follow up to remind them what they promised and ask them when they’ll complete—or if they’re cancelling. (If the recipient still doesn’t complete the todo after a certain amount of time, you can then take that as their cancellation.)
Diligently sending followups in these two situations ensures that there’s no way to forget or “drop bits”; every single todo you send will eventually come to some resolution. Gootodo works in both cases, allowing you to follow up on confirmation and completion steps.
Example 1: Following up in a week
Here’s an example of completion. Suppose you, at reader@example.com, ask your coworker Ben Smith to send you the PFR Report.
Date: April 9, 20..
From: reader@example.com
To: ben.smith@example.com
BCC: 1w@gootodo.com
Subject: please send me the PFR report
Ben - could you please send me the PFR report - never got it from you. Thanks.
R.
Maybe Ben has been dragging his heels, hoping you’d forget all about the report. So when he sees this e-mail, he ignores it, hoping you’ll get distracted by work and forget about this undone todo within a few days.
Wrong. You BCC’d 1w@gootodo.com, so it will appear on your todo list in one week. This way, if Ben hasn’t replied within a week to give you confirmation or completion, you can follow up again. And at that point you can paste in the original e-mail.
Date: April 16, 20..
From: reader@example.com
To: ben.smith@example.com
BCC: 1w@gootodo.com
Subject: awaiting your reply - please send me the PFR report
Ben - just following up from my note last week (see below).
Could you send the PFR report, please?
R.
> Date: April 9, 20..
> From: reader@example.com
> To: ben.smith@example.com
> Subject: please send me the PFR report
> Ben - could you please send me the PFR report—never got it from you. Thanks.
> R.
Notice that you’ve again BCC’d 1w@gootodo.com, which creates another reminder for you a week from now. This way you can follow up again and again until Ben sends the report or at least acknowledges that he got your request.
Example 2: Following up in several months
This example demonstrates the month-day addressing feature. Let’s start with the confirmation step, since this is where salespeople, and others who need followup, often get stuck. Some people acknowledge a todo with a “brush-off” response, postponing their reply to some time in the future.
Suppose you’re trying to get a coworker, employee, or client to sign up for a monthly training session that she needs:
Date: September 5, 20..
From: reader@example.com
To: jane.williams@example.com
Subject: sign up for the Z1 training session?
Jane,
Are you ready to sign up for our monthly Z1 training session?
There are only a few slots left.
Thanks,
R.
Jane replies with a brush-off, figuring that you’ll certainly forget about the todo within a few months:
Date: September 6, 20..
From: jane.williams@example.com
To: reader@example.com
Subject: Re: sign up for the Z1 training session?
R.-sure, just get back to me in early March and I’ll be ready to sign up.
Jane
Jane is mistaken.