<h2>'When are you going to finish this task?'</h2>Every person in the corporate world will relate to the above question as a boss or subordinate. The bosses love questioning, while the subordinates don’t quite enjoy answering. The deadline culture is prevalent in the corporate world. It is, in fact, a primary tool of control of managers over subordinates. Every meeting starts or ends with such a flood of commitments. Perceptions of individual performance are built around adherence to the commitments. People who adhere to commitments are seen in a positive light, while those who do not are not.  Deadlines have a perceived advantage; they control the wastage of time. The best proof of this advantage is the status of any task which does not have a deadline. Experience tells us that such tasks, in many cases, do not get completed at all. However, the problem starts when many commitments are thrust upon a few resources. When faced with an existing workload and new commitments every day, resources try to ask for a comfortable time to make new commitments. This helps them delay the start of the task to accommodate other urgent tasks that may crop up during the time period. Interestingly, deadlines give resources important information – by how much time they can afford to delay the start of the task. Starting the job close to the deadlines leaves less time to manage uncertainties encountered during the task. In many instances, due to last-moment pressure of a deadline, resources skip final checks and hand over incomplete work, which, in turn, increases work in downstream departments.  The deadlines for a new task are often set without much consideration for existing commitments. This creates a conflict of priorities between tasks. Many tasks are equally important. Given this situation, the resources prioritise based on what they think is best or based on the decibel levels of the scream of his boss. In either case, the prioritisation decisions may not be in the company’s best interest. In some situations, we find resources not attending to the company’s constraints and moving to other jobs due to deadline pressures.  A company well entrenched in the deadline culture does not have a fixed priority list of tasks for any of its managers, even for a day. The day starts with one set of tasks and ends with another, with frequent interruptions in between. Meetings clash, resources move out of one meeting to attend others, and working hours expand beyond eight hours.    The assumption that deadlines determine the amount of wasted time seems erroneous. Deadline culture is all about managers abdicating responsibility. It helps them avoid the trouble of getting into the details of issues related to doing the job effectively. So, what is the alternative to this unproductive culture which helps no one? Instead of asking just one question about when the job will complete, managers should ask three questions for effective execution:<ol><li>When will you start the job? This question will help managers understand the priority list decided by the resources. Many of the tasks on the priority list may not be of top priority to the organisation. A discussion on the start date will help resources align priorities, move the start of some tasks lower in order. In many cases, the decision to reprioritise is with the managers themselves.</li><li>What are the obstacles to working uninterrupted on this task, once it starts? This question aims to surface all sources of interruption so that managers can take decisions or act as a filter to prevent interruptions from elongating task duration.</li><li>What is the remaining duration? This third question should only be asked after the job has started. The question should be asked frequently. The idea is not to set a deadline again, but to understand if there are interruptions to the task. The trend of remaining duration information will provide information on interruptions to the job. The role of managers is again to facilitate effective working.</li></ol>Yes, replacing one easy question with three detailed questions requires a change in the mindset of managers – a shift from controlling to facilitating. It is also a shift from abdication of responsibility to taking charge for resolving issues affecting the task. <h2>So what do we do now with deadlines?</h2>Eliminate all deadlines except the one at the end of the project.

Key Takeaways

'When are you going to finish this task?' Every person in the corporate world relates to this dreaded question of 'deadlines'. They are perceived to control the wastage of time, which in reality does not seem to be true. Asking 3 simple questions can help managers with effective execution.

Deadline culture – does it help?

<h4>Deadline culture – does it help?</h4>

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Explore the impact of deadline culture on productivity and efficiency in corporate settings, and alternatives for effective task management by Vector Consulting Group.