Deadlines Management Strategies

What if you stopped working 48 hours before your project deadline?   This project management chart perfectly captures what happens to most teams. We laugh because it's painfully true.   But what if there was a way to avoid that chaotic "Project Reality" scenario altogether?   When I was a child, we would all be cramming the day before our school tests. During lunch breaks on test days, the school playground transformed into a sea of anxious children muttering facts while neglecting their parathas.   Then I witnessed something that would change my approach to deadlines.   The day before a major exam, I visited my neighbour to borrow her notes. I found her calmly playing carrom. "I never open my books 48 hours before an exam," she said with serene confidence.   I was shocked. Her grades? Consistently stellar.   This simple philosophy transformed my approach to project management:   Always allocate a 20% time buffer at the end of every project, during which no work is scheduled.   This buffer isn't for work. It's for reflection, quality improvements, and the strategic thinking that transforms good deliverables into exceptional ones.   Here are some benefits I have observed using this approach:   ▪️That last tweak in the colour or button dramatically improves UI ▪️Rework requests sharply decline ▪️Sales pitches achieve better outcomes ▪️The final touches which introduce the personalised elements help build strong customer relationships ▪️Board is much more engaged in the conversation and approvals go through smoothly ▪️Output is significantly streamlined and simplified multiplying impact ▪️Less stress all around   Do teams initially resist this approach? Absolutely.   "We're wasting productive time," or "the client/board doesn't need the material so much in advance of the meeting" are the common complaints.   But as teams experience the dramatic quality improvements and the elimination of those dreaded last-minute fire drills, attitudes change.   The next time you're planning a project, fight the urge to schedule work until the very last minute. Those final breathing spaces are where excellence happens.   Have you tried an unconventional deadline management strategy - do share!   #projectmanagement #leadership #execution #productivityhacks

𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐢-𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬 – 𝐀 𝐌𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐜 𝐓𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 The worst time to plan your work? When the clock’s already ticking. I learnt that the hard way. Back then, I was always bouncing between research, drafting, and last-minute tweaks — sprinting toward the finish line. I hit some deadlines. Missed plenty too. It all felt messy. Disconnected. Exhausting. Then I tried something different. I split the work into smaller chunks. And gave each one its own deadline – not just the final one. Say you’re writing a report. Don’t only focus on the submission date. Pin down when your research ends. Block out when drafting begins. Fix a date for your first draft. Schedule time to polish and refine. Diarise them all. Each one keeps the wheels turning. The trick? Start from the end. Then space out your mini-deadlines in twos and threes. Each step makes the next one easier. It’s a simple move. But it takes intent. And the result is clear. You feel calmer. You stay on top of things. You produce better work. More flow. More thought. Less panic. This isn’t just for lawyers. Or for rookies. It works if you’re building a business plan, reviewing a policy, creating content or drafting legal work. The best people don’t chase deadlines. They stay ahead – one mini-deadline at a time. What’s your go-to move for staying ahead on big tasks?

We once built an entire email strategy around a client's product launch date, only for them to delay by 3 months. That miscommunication cost us $200K in projected revenue. Here's the system we now follow to prevent it from happening again. 1. Document everything in writing No more verbal only agreements or assumptions. Every key date, deliverable, and dependency gets documented and shared with all stakeholders. This creates accountability and gives everyone a single source of truth to reference. 2. Implement regular check-ins Schedule brief status meetings to confirm timelines are still on track. These quick touchpoints help catch potential delays early before significant resources are invested. 3. Build buffer time into all schedules Add extra time to every major milestone (just in case). This padding accounts for the inevitable hiccups that occur in any project without derailing the entire strategy. 4. Create contingency plans For every campaign, develop Plan B scenarios: - What if key elements are delayed? - What if resources are limited? - What if priorities change? Having these alternatives ready means you can pivot quickly without starting from scratch. 5. Leverage dependency roadmapping Implement a visual system that shows how each part of your strategy connects to deliverables. This makes it immediately clear to everyone what happens if one piece gets delayed. The biggest lesson? Communication breakdowns are expensive, but they're also preventable. By implementing these systems, we've reduced timeline-related issues dramatically and saved countless hours of rework. What systems have you built to prevent costly miscommunications?

The more time you have, the less that gets done. Why this happens may be a mystery to us, but the solution is simple. And it's not just fixing your motivation. We're not the first to have this problem. In 1953, the NBA almost went bankrupt because teams employed a new strategy: hold onto the ball for entire quarters and try to score at the last second. The result? A six over-time game with a handful of baskets scored. How did the NBA fix this problem? They invented the shot clock -- designed specifically to ensure an entertaining number of shots would occur per game. Now basketball players get more done, in less time, and NBA viewership has skyrocketed. Why should you care? Because the problem that plagued the NBA is plaguing your productivity and the NBA's solution will revolutionize your life. The problem with deadlines is simple: work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. This is Parkinson's law. As long as you have time before your deadline you will either (1) create more work for yourself to use up all the time or (2) crawl towards the finish line. Neither are great. While the first seems harmless, each hour you spend working provides less value than the previous hours spent and might not justify the cost (the law of diminishing returns). The second is just a waste of time. So at the end of the day, a deadline is a double-edged sword. With them, you might do too much. Without them, you might not do enough. So how can you learn from the NBA shot clock and leverage deadlines to help you? ⏰ Accept that as humans we are bad at managing our time. (The "Planning Fallacy"). We tend to overestimate or underestimate the time it takes to complete a task. This skews our deadlines to either give us too much or too little time. 🏋♂️ Train yourself to overcome the planning fallacy. Try this exercise: whenever you undergo a task you'll have to repeat in the future, time yourself. When it's over, assess whether you spent your time effectively and at what point additional effort did not equate to worthwhile value. 💵 Run a cost benefit analysis early. Stop chasing unachievable perfection. Recognize what your ideal end product would be with infinite time. Recognize what your acceptable end product is given reality. What is the cost to get from acceptable to ideal and how much of that are you (or your client) willing to pay? ⏲ Don't just set objectives, set time limits. Do it for each task. Set a time that falls somewhere between ideal and acceptable given your analysis. And the most important one: ✊ Respect your deadlines, but don't lose sleep over them. There are times where you will need to go past your deadline and losing sleep is worth the reward. There will be times where you need to accept its time to go to sleep even if your work product could always be a little bit better. But by implementing your own shot clock -- you'll know when it's worth it. #parkinsonslaw #productivity #professional

Teams in large organizations often have tunnel vision for their current priority. Cross-functional deadlines get missed and important programs are jeopardized. Here are 5 steps to avoid this. Ideally, everyone in your organization would understand the importance of supporting the work for cross-functional efforts. Unfortunately, that is almost never how it works for a complex business. For example, while I was working on streaming the Olympics, I knew the deliverables more than eighteen months in advance. However, most of my partner teams were supporting other urgent programs during this time and other priorities took precedence. To ensure that these other priorities didn’t stop us from missing our deadline, I needed to continue driving visibility and get stakeholders to complete the work in parallel to other priorities. My method for getting support and driving alignment was to ensure everyone understood WHY they needed to complete the work and when it was really urgent. If you are fortunate, as I have been, you will have a program manager who develops the schedule and helps you over-communicate it to senior leadership. If you don’t have someone, you will need to grow one and train them to: 1) Backwards Plan You must backwards plan the entire schedule, especially for hard-deadline programs. 2) Identify Deliverables One of the key outcomes of the backwards planning is to establish critical deliverables, who owns them, and the deadline or milestone for their completion. 3) Quantify Impact If you can’t explain the impact of missing a deliverable, nobody will care. You must be crystal clear on what happens to the program when something is missed. 4) Communicate Communicate the entire plan at the start. Then, communicate progress on a regular basis. Communicate clearly and often. If you think you are over-communicating, you may be starting to communicate enough. 5) Escalate People are often afraid of this, but it is an important tool. You should absolutely try to resolve any issues with your partners before escalating, but don’t be afraid to escalate when necessary. Always do it with your partner’s knowledge, even if you don’t have their consent. This is a high judgement call - the type of call that executives need to be capable of. I’ve had partner teams who clearly had no plan to deliver what I needed by the date they had been provided. I would always approach that team’s leadership to see how a plan could be developed. In some cases, they were simply overloaded with work on other programs. Escalating the issue actually ended up being helpful to them. What do you do to drive long, cross-functional programs with hard deadlines? For a live discussion on topics like this, please join Ethan Evans and me on February 15 & 16 for our class: “Lead Large-Scale Tech & Excel as a Technology Executive:" https://lnkd.in/eQQUhMvf Use the code FAST25 through December 3 for a 25% discount.