Using GTD when you need to track other's actions also?

A

Aspen

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I have a question for those using GTD in a managerial position or even in a partnership situation where you are responsible for your own work and also at least liable for the work of others.

I am starting to feel comfortable with GTD for my own areas of focus, however I am not understanding how to track other ppl's areas and projects using GTD. "Waiting for" lets me know what I need before I can move forward myself, but as far as keeping up with the part of a project or sub project that is delegated out, I am not tracking this well.

Any suggestions?
 
Aspen said:
I have a question for those using GTD in a managerial position or even in a partnership situation where you are responsible for your own work and also at least liable for the work of others.
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I am in that situation, but let me clarify something before I answer. If it is going to have your attention, do not matter if you are or not liable for the situation, since your psyche will make you liable.

Aspen said:
I am starting to feel comfortable with GTD for my own areas of focus, however I am not understanding how to track other ppl's areas and projects using GTD. "Waiting for" lets me know what I need before I can move forward myself, but as far as keeping up with the part of a project or sub project that is delegated out, I am not tracking this well.
Any suggestions?
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This is what I do. I keep them in my system, and in my weekly meeting discuss it. I even sent an agenda for the meeting in advance (yes for the weekly one) and includes those things. People now come prepared, even if it is to tell me that they have not move forward.

I hope this helps...
 
What's the desired outcome? What's the next action? (Yours, not your delegatee's.)

For a project that you are supervising, your next action probably falls into one of a few pretty standard categories:
* Receive progress report and provide input.
* Review work and provide input.
* Remove obstacles, for instance by persuading another department to allocate resources.
* Adjust assignments to add or subtract your own department's resources from the project as needed.

All of these seem to fit pretty well in the standard GTD framework.

Katherine
 
Managing other people's projects

I currently manage 6 direct and an additional 4 indirect reports and am responsible for the 40 to 50 projects that they are typically responsible for. And by project, here, I mean the objectives that each of them will be held accountable for and for which I will be held accountable for management.

I use the GTD add-in for outlook and track these using several of the tools that are incorporated in that toolset. Specifically @agendas, @waiting fors, and projects. @waitingfors have a custom "Delegated To" field and since it is in the task folder it is available to all outlook task items, so I tend to fill it in for projects that my people are responsible for. That way when I do my weekly review, I'm not just reviewing my projects, but I'm also reviewing the projects my people are working on. @waitingfors are things I'm waiting on before I can move forward, and also things that I've assigned as part of the project for delegated projects. My @waitingfor get's pretty long, but I've got custom views that are set up that I can use to look at delegated projects, etc. I have also added an "Agenda For" custom field and @Agenda items get a name assigned. That way my Agenda For items can be sorted, filtered, or grouped by this field... So when I'm talking to a particular direct report I've got a view set up that lists @Agendas, @Waiting Fors, and Projects delegated to that individual...

During weekly 1:1 meetings with each person, I've got my list in front of me and I can see what has moved forward and what is getting stale. If I need to take any action to move it forward it gets added to my next action list...

Seems to work reasonably well for me...
 
Org chart

If you need to keep track of multiple employees/partners/etc. Areas of Responsibility, you could use the company org chart and list under each one the hats they wear.

If you need to keep track of "Delegated Projects", you could keep an @Delegated_Projects list (or folder). (If you trust the person you're delegating to doesn't need to be nduged, you don't need to track specific actions for each one. If you need to keep tabs on specifics, you could keep it in the notes area.)
 
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