Stuck in waiting mode (TLP 2025w8)

Sometimes your team members can get stuck in waiting mode, perhaps for prolonged periods of time if you are not careful.

Notes:

• On a daily basis, I ask my team members for status updates.
• Giving a status update is a specific skill-set: you want to give clear facts as concisely as possible.
• Dates, numbers, dollar amounts...these are clear facts. They are measurable.
• When the person starts to waffle during a status update and go off on tangents, it is a red flag.
• Another red flag is when they begin their status update with "I am waiting on...".
• They may not be blocked right now, but they are stuck in a waiting patterns which is just as bad as may lead to a deadlock.
• Time is being spent, but no progress is being made.
• Rather than waiting, the need to be pushing.
• There is such a thing as positive pushiness, when someone is pro-actively pushing a topic forward rather than passively waiting for the result.
• In a busy commercial environment, especially a start-up: you need to keep moving or die.
• Your competition is not waiting, so why are you?
• A big enterprise is different: it may have "stuck in waiting mode" built into it's DNA, but as a leader you need to challenge that status quo.
• When I receive the "I am waiting on..." status update from someone in my team, I immediately respond with "have you tried X, or Y, or Z?" to try to get them moving again.
• But to be honest that frustrates me, as senior folks will work out those options for themselves, or even better options than anything I can come up with.
• Put simply: "stuck in waiting mode" behaviour is fine for junior folks, or even mid-level folks on some occasions, but for senior folks it is unacceptable and should be called out during 1-to-1 sessions.
• Waiting is fine if you have other tasks you can do in the interim to keep the objective moving forward, but if it becomes blocking, a plan B needs to be identified immediately.
• Waiting is not a good strategy, and if it become endemic in your team, it can become a terrible anti-pattern.
• Don't let waiting become part of your culture.

Notes and subscription links are here: https://techleader.pro/a/681-Stuck-in-waiting-mode-(TLP-2025w8)