Ep: 289: OFS Daily Report = Accountability

Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at working with OFS online Filipino specialists. This is episode 289, the Daily Report and Accountability. So this is going to be interesting. Most of my podcasts come from my newsletter, which I don't really write usually. Usually someone on my team writes it. Julia. And sometimes I do write it, though, although you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between what she writes and what I write. So in this newsletter, recently, when we talked about the Daily Report, Julia actually started the newsletter with what would be a lie coming from me, although clearly a problem on my part because of her perception, she started with I'll share a badly kept secret. I don't read all the daily reports my team sends me, which is not true. I do read their daily reports. Maybe I don't go into detail on them. I may skim them, and I don't always respond to all of them. There's 40 people on my team, and responding to 40 daily reports every day is you. You know, probably not in the cards for me. But this also means that I'm not doing a great job of letting people know that they're appreciated from their daily reports because they think I don't read them. And the crazy thing is that even though they think I don't read their daily reports, they still send them, which says something about, I guess, maybe me as a boss. Maybe I'm demanding and overbearing, or maybe they respect me enough to send it because they know that I want it. I'm not really sure what it says. I'm sure it says something. And they all know that if they really need my attention, they can either ping me on Basecamp, our project management system, or they can send me an email directly, or there are ways for them to get me directly outside of that daily Report. And that's typically how we interact is not with the Daily Report, but in other things, in other areas where they're working on something specific. So then what's the point of this daily report if they think I'm not even reading it? Well, the point is accountability. It gives them a chance to prove what they're doing. They get a chance to say, hey, I did this and this and this today, and this is what I'm working on. It also gives them a chance to ask me questions. Also, then I do pay attention to them. So even if I'm not reading everyone, I'm still skimming them. And I recognize when someone stops sending daily reports So I see your daily reports. I see that they're sending them every day or consistently. Or I start to recognize, like, hey, I haven't gotten an email or a daily report from this person in a while. What's going on here? Then I can start taking action to correct the problem. Well, maybe there is a problem or maybe there's not, but I'm not getting the report, so that's a problem for me. So I can at least go to them and say, hey, I haven't gotten a report. What's going on? Will you please be better about sending daily reports? Typically in all of this, I can gauge productivity just based off of the reports that are happening and the work that's happening. Like, if I see reports happening but the work isn't corresponding to the reports, well, then I know something's wrong. And I'm sure you might ask, like, oh, what if they lie in their daily reports? Well, I still get to gauge their productivity, and I get to see, like, is the work actually happening or is it not? And you're telling me it is, but I can see that it's not. The other side of that is try and remove any motivation for them to lie by trying to be really flexible and giving them work they enjoy doing. So one of the things that my team has told me that might cause someone to lie on their reports is if they really dislike the work that they're doing, or if there is no flexibility for them, like, if they're sick and they have to work, they're expected to show up when they're sick. Then know, you may not be honest every single time because it's hard to work when you're sick, or it's hard to work on a holiday when everybody else around you isn't working and you want to be with your family, but you can't be because your work is requiring you. That may be a cause for, you know, not telling the truth in your daily reports, which once you've started doing it, it's easier to repeat it, and that can become a problem. So we let our people be unproductive sometimes. And some of that is just paid time off or holidays or sick time. Or sometimes it's okay to be unproductive in a day at work. You know, everybody has an unproductive day. And if they're sick and unproductive, they can tell us that in the report. I don't mind. And actually, if someone told me that, I'd probably be congratulatory of them for being honest, not for being Sick in all of this. To me, it's just the habit of the report that makes such a difference for me. It's super important for me because I don't want to micromanage what's going on, and I don't want to have to think about the tasks and wonder about them. I want them to tell me, and then I can give feedback, I can give training, I can change direction, I can pivot, I can do whatever I need based off of them telling me what they're doing. The daily report tells me that they're working, that they're progressing, that they're loyal. It tells me they're there when I need them. It tells me that they're not afraid to ask for help. It tells them that I'm here for them when I respond to them. It's a really good situation. So in my daily reports, I ask them to answer three questions. Number one, what did you do today? Which is the accountability piece? Number two, what problems did you run into? Which is hopefully them being open with me, which tells them that, tells me that they can trust me. And then number three, what can I do to help? Which is my way of trying to help solve the problem and trying to help them be more invested in a solution. Hopefully I'm getting a solution from them that I can help them with. In the third question, which is what can I do for what can I do to help? I rarely get answers to questions number two and three, I almost always get answers to number one, just what did you do today? Questions two and three, what problems did you run into and what can I do to help? Are much more rare that I get those, but they're there and they know that they can ask for help or they know that they can tell me problems or bring me things. I do not have a template for our daily reports. That's it. What I just told you is all it is. It's what did you do today? What problems did you run into and what can I do to help? You can send it to me however you want. You can send me an email, although I prefer the basecamp version. That's all we do. That's our daily reports. It's something that I want people to do every single day so I know what's going on in the business. That's my way of keeping my thumb on, like, the heartbeat of the business.