The very word Deadline is scary. It suggests that you don’t achieve the lines and you are dead, well, metaphorically. In business, employees meet deadlines, beat deadlines, but quite often they work against deadlines. So the word ‘Deadline’ evokes terms like stay back, yawning, cups and cups of coffee, sacrificing weekends, panic, and frustration.
In Business, time is money, and rightly so. Timely delivery to clients means winning their appreciation, and confirming the chances of more orders in future. This reaffirms the need of meeting business deadlines. When we are swamped with projects and know the deadlines, organically we do just three things-
• Prioritize the tasks,
• Schedule the time, and,
• Offer Him prayers to take us out of the ordeal.
Meeting the deadlines is dependent on internal as well as external factors. When you are prioritizing, scheduling (and praying), you are addressing the internal factors, those which are in your capabilities. Contemplating the external factors however is all the more important. One word fits it well- Risk Management.
No matter how much you do to achieve the deadlines, they are often hampered by the uninvited external events. My friend Chetan Sahni, who is an Indian Exporter, had to export containers from Delhi to Mumbai port the next day. Just one day before the dealer telephoned him and said that he wanted containers by the time the Sun sets the next day. Chetan decided the course of events, prioritized the work and set everything right that would ensure timely deliveries. He however, was ditched by some external factors including transportation and environmental dilemmas, which prevented him from completing his order.
In spite of having containers in bulk and arranging for the driver, he couldn’t process the dealer’s request as the delivery truck left precisely on time, without keeping some extra time in palms, and got late on the roads. To worsen it yet, there wasn’t much arrangement for any unprecedented adversity. It rained heavily on the way and half of the containers got ruined.
How About Evaluating Risk Management?
Considering the even/or conditions that are beyond your control is Risk Management. Keeping space for unrelated events that might pop up in a snapshot calls for a healthy deadline management process. So next time you have a deadline to achieve, make sure that you have made a risk management plan. And then, no deadline would appear haunting, and no deadline missed.
In Business, time is money, and rightly so. Timely delivery to clients means winning their appreciation, and confirming the chances of more orders in future. This reaffirms the need of meeting business deadlines. When we are swamped with projects and know the deadlines, organically we do just three things-
• Prioritize the tasks,
• Schedule the time, and,
• Offer Him prayers to take us out of the ordeal.
Meeting the deadlines is dependent on internal as well as external factors. When you are prioritizing, scheduling (and praying), you are addressing the internal factors, those which are in your capabilities. Contemplating the external factors however is all the more important. One word fits it well- Risk Management.
No matter how much you do to achieve the deadlines, they are often hampered by the uninvited external events. My friend Chetan Sahni, who is an Indian Exporter, had to export containers from Delhi to Mumbai port the next day. Just one day before the dealer telephoned him and said that he wanted containers by the time the Sun sets the next day. Chetan decided the course of events, prioritized the work and set everything right that would ensure timely deliveries. He however, was ditched by some external factors including transportation and environmental dilemmas, which prevented him from completing his order.
In spite of having containers in bulk and arranging for the driver, he couldn’t process the dealer’s request as the delivery truck left precisely on time, without keeping some extra time in palms, and got late on the roads. To worsen it yet, there wasn’t much arrangement for any unprecedented adversity. It rained heavily on the way and half of the containers got ruined.
How About Evaluating Risk Management?
Considering the even/or conditions that are beyond your control is Risk Management. Keeping space for unrelated events that might pop up in a snapshot calls for a healthy deadline management process. So next time you have a deadline to achieve, make sure that you have made a risk management plan. And then, no deadline would appear haunting, and no deadline missed.
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