When other people make you late

How to cope when people don’t meet deadlines

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Good Morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is about how you can make your deadlines
when you're depending on other people. Today's question comes from
a listener who runs a film festival. She has deadlines

(00:26):
for filmmakers, sponsors, rental providers, and so forth. In order
to meet her deadlines, she reports, she spends a lot
of time chasing people to meet theirs. I do make
sure to give buffers for those deadlines, but sometimes people
really miss the deadlines, despite phone calls, emails, and even
Facebook messages during the week following their miss deadlines. She says,

(00:50):
since I am coordinating so many people and from so
many different walks of life, I know that I cannot
expect them all to meet my deadlines. But that means
I don't meet my lines. I have a hard time
getting my work done as it requires their work to
be done on time. What would you suggest for handling
a team where their ability to get their work done

(01:11):
directly affects mine. I know this is a common question,
and not just for people running film festivals. Many of
us run big projects that require lots of people to
meet deadlines, and unfortunately, some people are much more reliable
than others. Sometimes there are good reasons and sometimes there
are not, But if you still want to be reliable,

(01:34):
you have to figure out what to do about it.
Our listener is doing the right thing by building in
a buffer and communicating frequently before the deadline. It's good
to reach out and see how things are going, and
if people are encountering any obstacles you should know about
when possible. It also recommends setting intermediate deadlines. People can

(01:55):
turn in portions of the work just so you can
check in on how the process is going. That said,
some people are still going to miss their deadlines and
the secondary real deadlines, so you need to do what
newspapers do. People might not turn in things, or a
story might not happen at the time it was supposed to,

(02:15):
but the newspaper never prints a blank page. Instead, there
are always some evergreen stories in the hopper that can
be run if there's an opening. Likewise, our festival director
can commission a bit more than she needs, or have
some work from previous years that could be shown again.
That way, she knows she's got enough material regardless, and

(02:39):
then play tough. It is totally fair to put into
people's contracts that if they don't turn their work in
on time, they will not be part of the festival.
People are free to show their own work whenever they'd like,
but if you'd like to be part of something bigger
than yourself, you have to play by group rules. A

(02:59):
lot of people learn this the hard way. I helped
with a choral composition contest for a few years, where
we once got a commission very late. We had to
spend a disproportionate amount of time that last week before
the concert learning that piece, and so the clause went
into the rules after that. Now, a film festival or

(03:21):
a choir competition is a little different from most projects
at work, but I think it still helps to think
through backup options. You can usually check in to see
if someone is falling behind, and if a team is
falling behind, then you need to think about option B.
Work hard to make option A work, but if it doesn't,

(03:41):
then what have an answer and you'll be more relaxed
in general. In the meantime, this is Laura, Thanks for listening,
and here's to making the most of our time. Hey, everybody,
I'd love to hear from you. You can send me

(04:03):
your tips, your questions, or anything else. Just connect with
me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at Before Breakfast Pod.
That's b E the number four, then Breakfast p o D.
You can also shoot me an email at Before Breakfast podcast.
At i heeart media dot com that Before Breakfast is

(04:24):
spelled out with all the letters. Thanks so much, I
look forward to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is a
production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.