Project, area of responsibility, or maybe somewhere in between?

[ivanjay205]

Curious how you would all handle this..... I am a business owner and not directly responsible for business development as I have a team that does handle it. However, I do come across people I want to do business with and pursue them and of course occasionally do get involved in business development efforts.

I met today with someone I have personally done business with and know for many many years. He is starting his own consulting business and there is a real chance to do work together in the future. We had a great discussion and left it as "lets stay in touch." He needs some time to get his business launched before we can do work.

So from a GTD perspective I guess the project would be "Establish X as a client for Y". Once we are engaged in one project I would turn him over to someone on my team to execute, monitor to ensure success and repeat. Once we get through a couple of projects I could say this is done and move on and let me team manage.

That being said, David defines a project within a year..... This could be within a year, this could be three years. All depends on how successful he is. I am either going to continue to pursue until we do business and say it is complete or at some point feel like he is not going to generate business for us in partnership and close out the project and move on. But again could be 1 year, could be 3.

It is not an area of focus..... But it is a longer term project.

Would you put this on your project list regardless? And how would you track this? Purely just create a recurring next action to Touch Base with person X until it moves to the next step every 6 months or so?

 

[mcogilvie]

I have a fair number of next actions basically of the form “Consider doing X?” scheduled to appear in the future. Mostly I put them back to sleep, but sometimes I take the next step and sometimes I delete them. This is different from something that definitely triggers a project, like “renew passport”. You could be more fancy in your case, and schedule something more definite like “heard from X lately? Still interested in Y?” rather than “reach out to X about Y?”

 

[René Lie]

I would consider keeping in touch to be an area of focus. As they say, areas of focus 'give birth' to projects. In a case like this, I would probably make it an R&D or 'look into' project, such as 'Look into establishing X as a client for Y'. This could actually start way before your friend is ready to commit, as you then just decide whether or not to proceed whenever he's ready - and at some point it would perhaps be a next action to agree on a meeting.
And as @mcogilvie suggests, setting up a tickler in the future could be a good idea too!

Another option could be to track it as a 'goal' (usually 1 to 3 years) for now - as long as the process as such doesn't begin until it's about a year until you want or need to cross the finish line. So, the time frame from now until 'done' is one thing; the time from now until 'start' is another - a university degree perhaps being a good example of something that ends in the distant future, but one have to start way before one year prior to 'done'...

 

[Suelin23]

I struggled with similar thoughts - how to manage ongoing things that are not worth creating a project in their own right? So I have each AoF setup a a project with a project plan and then mini or sub-projects under it.
When projects are delegated to my team but I still have involvement and are checking in and guiding my team, I need to decide if this is significant enough involvement to establish it as a project or keep as a sub-project in the AoF.

 

[gtdstudente]

Curious how you would all handle this..... I am a business owner and not directly responsible for business development as I have a team that does handle it. However, I do come across people I want to do business with and pursue them and of course occasionally do get involved in business development efforts.

I met today with someone I have personally done business with and know for many many years. He is starting his own consulting business and there is a real chance to do work together in the future. We had a great discussion and left it as "lets stay in touch." He needs some time to get his business launched before we can do work.

So from a GTD perspective I guess the project would be "Establish X as a client for Y". Once we are engaged in one project I would turn him over to someone on my team to execute, monitor to ensure success and repeat. Once we get through a couple of projects I could say this is done and move on and let me team manage.

That being said, David defines a project within a year..... This could be within a year, this could be three years. All depends on how successful he is. I am either going to continue to pursue until we do business and say it is complete or at some point feel like he is not going to generate business for us in partnership and close out the project and move on. But again could be 1 year, could be 3.

It is not an area of focus..... But it is a longer term project.

Would you put this on your project list regardless? And how would you track this? Purely just create a recurring next action to Touch Base with person X until it moves to the next step every 6 months or so?

@ivanjay205

You kindly have this end asking to help avoid 'being all over the place' and for added leverage:

Does the "longer term project" contribute to an Area-of-Focus, even if imperfectly?

 

[bobusa]

It's not an AOF (yet), it's not a project (yet) and it not a goal (yet). Therefore I would put it on your someday/maybe list with a yearly reminder (if possible) and it will pass by you to decide on in your weekly/monthly reviews as well to be ready to put on the correct list when needed.

 

[ivanjay205]

It's not an AOF (yet), it's not a project (yet) and it not a goal (yet). Therefore I would put it on your someday/maybe list with a yearly reminder (if possible) and it will pass by you to decide on in your weekly/monthly reviews as well to be ready to put on the correct list when needed.

This might be a good idea, right now I had a tickler next action but maybe it is more when it feels right....

 

[GTDChemist]

Is there a next action right now that would move you closer to the desired outcome? If not, it would be someday maybe or projects on hold.

 

[Matt_M]

This sounds like something that is probably a tickler item or a calendar event to follow-up either every 6 months or a year. I would stick it on my calendar either in 6 months or next year as "Reach out to XYZ on his business". Essentially, this is just a lead that may or may not pan out anytime soon but it is good to just check in and see how things are going with this person. There's no real outcome or next action since there's no commitment here beyond letting it incubate. Even if things don't pan out for his particular business, you never know if it's a future recommendation or something else.

 

[gtdstudente]

This sounds like something that is probably a tickler item or a calendar event to follow-up either every 6 months or a year. I would stick it on my calendar either in 6 months or next year as "Reach out to XYZ on his business". Essentially, this is just a lead that may or may not pan out anytime soon but it is good to just check in and see how things are going with this person. There's no real outcome or next action since there's no commitment here beyond letting it incubate. Even if things don't pan out for his particular business, you never know if it's a future recommendation or something else.

@Matt_M

When you express "probably a tickler item or a calendar event to follow-up either every 6 months or a year."
A crucial reality in which GTD practitioners can readily have at their disposal: S P A C E

Very GTD nice

Thank you very much

 

[bobusa]

This sounds like something that is probably a tickler item or a calendar event to follow-up either every 6 months or a year. I would stick it on my calendar either in 6 months or next year as "Reach out to XYZ on his business". Essentially, this is just a lead that may or may not pan out anytime soon but it is good to just check in and see how things are going with this person. There's no real outcome or next action since there's no commitment here beyond letting it incubate. Even if things don't pan out for his particular business, you never know if it's a future recommendation or something else.

That can work as well. Isn't GTD great in that respect? One can make it fit to whatever fits in your system. Love it!

 

[cfoley]

For me, it would depend on when I want to see it next.

For example:

• If I wanted to touch base in 3 or 4 months, I might use a tickler.
• If I wanted to be reminded regularly, in case there was an opportunity, I might use Someday/Maybe.
• If I wanted to talk to the business development team about it, I might create a project for that. I might do this in addition to a tickler or S/M for the overall thing.

 

[bishblaize]

I would just stick a new project in my task manager with a deferred start date. Put it 6 months in the future and call it something like "See if Bob is ready to business". Even i

I also have a list of people that I want to stay in touch from time to time. I have a recurring action in my Inbox that pops up every few months to scan over the list, which will sometimes prompt me to drop them a line.

 

[cfoley]

I would just stick a new project in my task manager with a deferred start date. Put it 6 months in the future and call it something like "See if Bob is ready to business".

I used to do things like this and stopped doing it, preferring the tickler instead. The problems I found were:

• In 6 months, the world has moved on and the next action or even the project might have totally changed.
• In 6 months time, the project and next action would appear on my lists by stealth. This would be OK if I was a robot, but I am a human and it is important to me to understand my lists and how the things on the relate to each other and to the way I am using my time.
• Sometimes I check every list every day but other times I decide to focus on a single project or a single context for days at a time. This means that I might go days without looking at my project or context lists. It meant that I would often miss things appearing on my lists by stealth. By contrast, I always check my calendar and tickler file.

Obviously it works for you, so my question is do you have the same problems I experienced and how do you get around them?

 

[bishblaize]

I used to do things like this and stopped doing it, preferring the tickler instead. The problems I found were:

• In 6 months, the world has moved on and the next action or even the project might have totally changed.
• In 6 months time, the project and next action would appear on my lists by stealth. This would be OK if I was a robot, but I am a human and it is important to me to understand my lists and how the things on the relate to each other and to the way I am using my time.
• Sometimes I check every list every day but other times I decide to focus on a single project or a single context for days at a time. This means that I might go days without looking at my project or context lists. It meant that I would often miss things appearing on my lists by stealth. By contrast, I always check my calendar and tickler file.

Obviously it works for you, so my question is do you have the same problems I experienced and how do you get around them?

They appear in my Inbox, not in my project list. So I just process them in the same way I would if had found them in a calendar or tickler file.

 

[cfoley]

Ah, perfect.

It sounds like we do the same thing in effect.

 

[Stefan Godo]

Curious how you would all handle this..... I am a business owner and not directly responsible for business development as I have a team that does handle it. However, I do come across people I want to do business with and pursue them and of course occasionally do get involved in business development efforts.

I met today with someone I have personally done business with and know for many many years. He is starting his own consulting business and there is a real chance to do work together in the future. We had a great discussion and left it as "lets stay in touch." He needs some time to get his business launched before we can do work.

So from a GTD perspective I guess the project would be "Establish X as a client for Y". Once we are engaged in one project I would turn him over to someone on my team to execute, monitor to ensure success and repeat. Once we get through a couple of projects I could say this is done and move on and let me team manage.

That being said, David defines a project within a year..... This could be within a year, this could be three years. All depends on how successful he is. I am either going to continue to pursue until we do business and say it is complete or at some point feel like he is not going to generate business for us in partnership and close out the project and move on. But again could be 1 year, could be 3.

It is not an area of focus..... But it is a longer term project.

Would you put this on your project list regardless? And how would you track this? Purely just create a recurring next action to Touch Base with person X until it moves to the next step every 6 months or so?

how often (or when/under which condition) would you like to be reminded of this?
if it is actual and want to check it regularly (WR), it is a project.
If there is a trigger, check whether regularly it happened.
Putting questions for myself in the calendar works perfectly.

there is an important point:
projects, long term plans and vision have an explicit time dimension (although the borders are arbitrary).
Areas of focus do not. (they are parallel to the time axis... - even if they change in time)