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| Supervisestaff.com |
We’re
constantly dealing and weeding out the individuals in our life who can’t
deliver on their word, but lazy people sneak through every so often. And while
the lazy always have their alibis, reasons and excuses, the fact of the matter
is that the job needs to get done. Here are some strategies to keep the ball rolling
despite a lazy person’s involvement on a project.
1. Be polite
but firm in your communication. It takes work to read through an angry email
and, as you know, lazy people aren’t good at completing work. Keep reminding
them of the commitment and hammer home the requirements, but keep it
professional and positive. Even lazy people like to be liked.
2. Keep it
simple and definitive. Long emails with intricate instructions are easy to
ignore; drawn-out phone messages are easily “lost.” Use methods like the Five
Sentences email approach to keep communication easy to read and digest. Boil
the task down to the most basic requirements and don’t position your language
in terms of open-ended questions, like “can you get me the blah-blah-blah by
next Friday?” This leaves too much room for interpretation and choice on their
behalf. Instead, simply state when you expect something to be completed –this
puts the onus on them to let you know if they can’t complete it by then.
3. Design
the path of least resistance. Make it easier for them to complete the task than
to put up with you. Set up a regular schedule of phone calls, emails, courier
pigeons, or your preferred method of communication. Become a consistent (but
still polite) annoyance in their lives until the task is completed.
4. Keep the
emotion out. Recognizing how pissed off or inconvenienced you are would take
effort that a lazy person doesn’t have. Adding information about the
frustration you’re experiencing simply puts more labor in between them and the
work that needs to get done. Stick to the facts and keep it unemotional. We
find it useful to write a message to them (the message you really want to
write) and get it out of your system. Then re-write it without the emotion
before you email it, send it, or affix it to the leg of the aforementioned
pigeon.
5. The last
ditch effort. When all else fails, do as much of their work as you can for
them. It’s unfortunate and it just enables them to become lazier, but the fact
of the matter is that you have a project to push forward and the work needs to
get done (even if it’s not by the person who’s supposed to do it). This may
even mean writing the report for them so that they can simply review it,
approve it, and sign their name.
Once you get
the deliverables or results from them you can remove them from future
involvement. Take them out of your consultant database, off your vendor list or
whatever it is that you need to do to insure that they don’t wind up on another
project.