The more you chase your team, the later the work gets done

If you're looking for how to follow up with your team so the work ships on time, start by counting how many times a day you send "hey, how's it going?". Every one of those messages pulls someone off the work to answer you. Chasing feels like it speeds delivery up, and often it does the opposite.

What happens after a "hey, how's it going?"

A ten-second check-in for the sender turns into a small task for whoever gets it. Follow its path:

1. The message lands in the middle of something else, and the person stops.
2. They open the group chat, figure out which task you mean and check where it stands.
3. They write a reply that sounds convincing, like "almost done".
4. They go back to what they were doing and have to remember where they left off.
5. The reply sits in the middle of the chat, far from the task, and tomorrow nobody can find it.

It doesn't add up for you either. "Almost done" doesn't tell you whether the work ships today or next week, and the next check-in is already booked in your head.

Now multiply that by the whole team, every day. The team group chat turns into a status board nobody can read, and Monday's meeting asks the same questions again, as the post on status meetings shows.

The person being chased speeds up, and the bill comes later

People who get interrupted make up for it by working faster, and they pay for it in stress. In an experiment presented at the CHI conference in 2008, Gloria Mark and colleagues found that interrupted participants actually finished their tasks faster, with no drop in quality. The cost showed up somewhere else: more stress, frustration, time pressure and effort.

Over one day, that looks like a win. Over a week, it's a tired team that answers fast and delivers slowly.

Chasing also tends to come with "just one more small thing". Requests that change halfway through are one of the sources of rework in marketing, and almost every team knows that story.

Why the work runs late even with all that chasing

When chasing becomes what moves the team, deadlines stop working on their own. The team quickly learns how things work around there:

• the urgent task becomes whichever one someone asked about last, and the agreed deadline slides to second place;
• answering status questions becomes part of the job, leaving less time for the job itself;
• people who get chased too much start reporting only when they're done, so delays surface late;
• nothing moves unless the manager asks, and the manager becomes the bottleneck of their own team.

That has a name: micromanagement. It often doesn't even start with distrust. It starts because the manager has nowhere to look, so they ask.

How to follow up with your team without interrupting anyone

The best follow-up is the one that happens without a message: the agreed deadline lives in the task, and the delay shows up on its own. A few rules help you swap the question for visibility:

1. Agree on the deadline in the task, when you create it. A deadline said out loud in a meeting disappears; a deadline written in the task stays in plain sight.
2. Look before you ask. If the list shows who has it and how much time is left, your question already has an answer. If that list is a spreadsheet nobody updates, start there.
3. Only ask about what's red. A task that's on time doesn't need chasing.
4. Swap "how's it going?" for "what do you need to get unstuck?". The first one asks for a report. The second one asks for help, and you can give it.
5. Batch whatever is left into one moment. One look at the list at the start of the day beats ten scattered messages.

This doesn't take the manager out of the loop. You still know everything, only now you read the list instead of interrupting people. The conversation with the team changes topic: out goes "where are we on this?", in comes "what's blocking you?".

Deadlines in plain sight in Experto

In Experto, every task has its own deadline, and delays are visible without anyone asking. In the Due by field, the task shows "2 days left" and, once it's past due, "Overdue by 3 hours", in red.

With the Estimate, Experto works out on its own when the task needs to start, based on the account's business days and hours. The Due today and This week filters show what's coming up.

For whoever manages the team, keeping track looks like this:

• Who has it: each person pulls the task they're going to do, and the team list shows who has it and for how many days. It's how a team can split the work without anyone handing it out.
• What's late: in the Organizer, the When › Overdue filter gathers everything past due in the lists in your view. On Monday morning, you can plan your team's week already knowing where to look.
• Wherever you are: with the iPhone app, the team's lists fit in your pocket, so you can check before you send a message.

When you really do need to tell everyone something, admins can send the team a notice and see who has read it, without starting yet another thread in the group chat.

Frequently asked questions

How do you follow up with your team without being annoying?

Keep the agreed deadline inside the task and look at the list before asking. When you do need to talk, ask only about what's late and offer help to get it unstuck, instead of asking for a report.

What is micromanagement?

It's tracking the team's work so closely that people spend more time explaining what they're doing than doing it. It usually comes from a lack of visibility: with nowhere to look, the manager asks.

How often should you follow up on tasks?

With deadlines in plain sight, task follow-up only needs to happen when something is late or stuck. A short weekly review of what's red is usually enough.

Want to stop sending "hey, how's it going?" in the group chat? Create your free account, free forever for up to 2 members, and see how to follow up with your team with nothing but deadlines in plain sight.