Deadlines are to your school what cogs are to a watch: both keep the overall machine ticking and running regularly. They’re necessary for everything to work seamlessly. Many thrive in an environment that sets clear, constant expectations through deadlines, but some may feel like they can’t keep up as due dates whiz by. If you or your office has trouble reaching its deadlines, try these steps.
- Set reasonable expectations and goals. It’s hard to run a race when you don’t know where the finish line is—or if the finish line is so far away, you’ll never be able to reach it with your current training. When it feels like you’re being asked to scale a mountain of a project, try setting smaller benchmarks first in a stepping-stone approach.
- Outline and understand the full process required to reach the stated goal. Often, tasks that seem simple and relatively quick to accomplish can be held up by reports or information provided by outside sources. Grab a pen and some paper, and draw out the workflow of what needs to happen to complete the goal, identifying tasks associated with specific people. From there, you’ll get a good idea of where progress can potentially bottleneck, which can help you gauge how much time you’ll need for a project.
- Ease pain points. By identifying where you or your team relies on members from other school departments, you can be ready to lend a little "oomph" to a project if (when) it stalls. You can add your voice to a request for specific information to be sent faster, or perhaps meet with other administrators and see what you need to do to make the process smoother for everyone involved.
- Communicate and collaborate. Just as you spoke with your colleagues in other departments and offices to facilitate an easier
- Don’t expect the work to be done sooner than scheduled. After all the mapping you did to outline a project, it’s likely that you’ve built in some wiggle room as a “just in case” pot of time from which to draw. It’s always possible that a project will be finished sooner, but highly unlikely. Therefore, don’t pressure yourself or your team to finish tasks before the deadline. If something truly needs to be done sooner than scheduled—or you think that the task should take less time than allotted—adjust the deadline so both you and your team know what’s expected.
- Stay focused on the most important goal. Sometimes, projects can take on a life of their own, expanding to include periphery goals in addition to the initial task. When this happens, don’t assume the new goals are more important than the original one. Take a moment to prioritize which work is most important.
- Know that external deadlines are written in stone. External deadlines from organizations outside of the school, like filing mandatory reports with government agencies or sending information to accrediting associations, are not typically flexible. Work backwards from the external deadline and give yourself enough time to deal with unforeseen circumstances—and, if you know you can’t make it work a week before the deadline, contact the organization to let it know you'll be late.
Additional ISM resources:
ISM Monthly Update for Business Officers Vol. 10 No. 1 Five Online Management Tools
Additional ISM resources for Gold Consortium members:
I&P Vol. 39 No. 8 Finding 'Out of Office' Time for the School Head
I&P Vol. 36 No. 14 Generational Differences: The New Management Paradigm
I&P Vol. 26 No. 16 'Back Up' Your Management Team With Task Calendars
