MBA879 Missed Deadlines. What do you do?

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We can't judge everything perfectly and this is going to get more and more imperative as you grow your team. In today's lesson, we're not going to talk about managing deadlines, but rather what do you do when a deadline is missed? Where you hit the deadline and what you need to have done is not done. We're gonna talk about how to deal with it. If you're a solopreneur, you're just working by yourself so you're the only person accountable here. Or if you have a team of people you're working with and there are people that are hitting deadlines and some are not, what do you do at that point? Today's the deadline. Things are not done. What's your action plan? Remember, the deadline's probably there for a reason because you need to get something out there. You want to sell this product or service to your customers, or you have other pending deadlines after it. So maybe you want to complete the actual creation of the product or the project at a certain period of time so you can start marketing it or even before that, test it. So all that stuff gets delayed if we don't complete the project in a timely fashion. Now, we already established that you haven't completed in a timely fashion because you hit the deadline. Things are not complete. And that's what today's lesson is all about, giving you an action plan to deal with this. We're also going to be talking about how to deal with this emotionally. This is really disappointing. It's frustrating. Not hitting deadlines can give you some serious anxiety because you're like, oh, man, what if I don't get this done in time? All these other pending things are going to get pushed back. We're also going to talk about how to deal with it practically so we can get it done and things are not extremely delayed. Thirdly, I'm also going to touch on not worrying about what you didn't do. A lot of us, we spend so much time thinking about, oh, man, I should have allowed more time. I should have done this and that and the other thing. That's true, and we're going to learn from that mistake. But there's time to worry about that. You can't do anything about that right now. Can't turn back to the hands of time. Right. So we're going to cover all these important points to make sure you know exactly what to do if you get to a deadline and things are not completed. All right, let's get into it. Let's get down to business. To begin today's lesson, we have to just establish the truth. The truth is, you are already late. If you hit the deadline and your project is not done, your product is not finished, the tasks are not completed, you're already running behind. That's just a fact. So whatever other deadlines you had afterwards, whether it's like, I need this product done so I can start creating the website, or I can start testing it, or I can start marketing it, all those other deadlines that follow the initial deadline that you had, they're going to need to be pushed back. Now. They can be pushed back maybe by a day, two, three, a week, a month. We don't know yet. That's what we're going to establish now, but it's better for you just to come to terms with the fact that things will be delayed because of this missed deadline. Now, we got to work around it. How are we going to make sure that the least amount of damage happens here, the least amount of delay continues to happen, and the project gets done? So the first thing we're going to do is recognize the reason why we got delayed, why we didn't hit the deadline. For a lot of us, it's because we actually bit off more than we can chew. We thought, hey, I can get all this done and I really can't, right? There's just not enough hours in the day. And the same goes with if you're hiring somebody or you're working with a team. Another reason is that we set deadlines not understanding that there are going to be problems along the way. There are going to be hiccups, there are going to be roadblocks, There are going to be some delays that are going to stop us from actually hitting those deadlines. And we didn't incorporate that into the deadline knowing that, hey, there's going to be problems. You need some flex time inside there. But sometimes when you do make sure there's flex time, and you do not underestimate how much you can get done, you still don't hit the deadline. Whether it's because of your own deficiency or because of. Of the team that you're working with. You know, your, your actual employees, some people are pulling their weight, some people are taking a little bit longer. This happens. Not everybody's equal. Not everybody works as fast. Not everybody has the same attention span, not everybody has the same concentration. And in fact, I've dealt with this over and over and over again with our business webinar Ninja. You know, we deal with a large team on our development team. Designers, developers, front end, back end, you know, engineers, server experts. And everybody has a different style. And some people hit deadlines and some don't. And it has a lot to do with the nature of their. Has to do with, you know, how complicated things are, how reliant their work is on other people's work. So delays happen, but you need to address them when they happen. So the first thing I like to do is do an exercise where this really helps me calm me down. Because when you get to a deadline and things are not completed, you get like an anxiety attack, like, oh, my gosh, this is a problem. We need this done. So what I like to do is write down every single thing that's not complete yet. What's pending now you might be thinking, oh, my gosh, this is gonna make me feel more overwhelmed looking at all the things that haven't been completed yet on a piece of paper. Just trust me here, you're gonna feel better in a second. But list everything. List every single thing. Okay? These are the pending items. This is what needs to be done. Should have been done by now, but it's not done. Okay, the next step is you have to prioritize. You gotta say, what are the most important things that need to get done? Like, what are the things that if I don't have, I don't have a product, I don't have a business, and what are the things that are nice to have? Or, like, you know, people may be expecting it, but, you know, I can maybe reintroduce it a little bit later. You really gotta get economical and think what is the absolute must haves? And what you'll find is probably in that list of things that are pending. Maybe 30% of it is a must have, maybe even 25%. And what you want to do is get zeroed in on that. You know, must have 20%, 25%, whatever it is, and say, I need this completed ASAP. This is the thing I have to have in order for us to move forward. The other stuff we can work on later or we can, you know, we can catch up later, but there are other things that are waiting on this. I have other deadlines that are pending, or they're waiting for these things to be completed so I can continue work. So let's make sure that we get this done. Now, this makes things a whole lot easier for yourself. If you're working by yourself or for your team, who needs to actually implement this? So what you're doing is just saying, hey, this is the bare minimum. I need this done, like, yesterday. But obviously we don't have a time machine. So I need you to commit and tell me how much time, how many hours do you need to get this done? Now, it may be helpful to share with your team that whole list of things that are pending and say, hey, these are all the things that are pending, but just this top 20%, 25%. This is what I need to get done. How many hours can you commit to this? I need you to push through. At this point, it seems a lot less overwhelming because it's like, okay, I only need to get this done to actually have a product on my hands or to move forward with my project, get a commitment, and that becomes an Extended deadline. Now, remember the other deadlines that are following after that, whether that's marketing or sales or, you know, creating a website around whatever you're creating, they're there and you need to adjust those as well. But you may have some leeway room here because again, you're working with less work. Instead of, you know, that whole list of things that need to be completed, Only that top 25% needs to be completed. That means there's less work you're gonna have to do on the other deadlines. Now, you need to communicate this clearly to your team. This needs to be done by this time so we can review it and we can move forward and then take a look at the other pending items that we have to do and complete those next. Now, if you're working by yourself, you are the one who's responsible. You're the person that needs to pull this off. So you gotta be honest with yourself. What can you do to get this? Now, if you're working by yourself, you might be thinking, oh, it's really overwhelming and I wish I had some help. That's true. But at the same time, the advantage of working by yourself is that you only need to answer to yourself. Meaning you don't have to worry if people are actually going to follow through. You're the person you're going to have to answer to, right? You're going to have to make sure. And you could pull it off if you wanted to. You could pull all nighters. You can do what it takes to make it happen. You're in control of the result. When you're relying on other people, you don't know what they're capable of doing. You don't know if they're promising something that they really can't do. There are people who just say yes to things because they're just not good with confrontation. They don't want to say no and say, I can't do it. But when you're just dealing with yourself, you can't lie to yourself. And if you feel like you're falling short, you could do what it takes to pull it off. And I've done this a ton of times. The example that comes to mind is the 100 RMBA community. When Nicole and I built that community, we had to script and shoot all the videos and create the workbooks and create the website. We did everything ourselves. So we only answered to ourselves. And we knew we had to pull it off. We had to pull all nighters. I remember, you know, before we launched, you know, the initial offering of the hundred dollar mba, we worked straight for two months. I think we took two days off in those two months, but literally we just pulled it off because we knew we had to make it happen. I can ask that of myself and Nicole can ask that of herself, but you really can't ask that of other people. They have other commitments, they have other standards. They work for you. They're not building something for themselves. You get the point. You're a little bit more in control when you're just working as a solopreneur. That's not to say that growing your business and hiring employees doesn't help, but I'm just giving you a silver lining because I know sometimes it can feel overwhelming when you have to do everything yourself. But if you're at that stage or you're building everything yourself and the next stage is hiring somebody, this is good. Learn from this example. Know how much time things take. So when you do hire somebody, you can say, hey, I've done this before. This is how long it takes. This is what I expect you to do. You know, especially because I've done it before. Okay, now that we've established we're only going to do the must have things, the things that we need to have to have a product or business on our hands. We have a new deadline. Your job is to make sure you're on top of that, either on top of yourself and checking in with yourself almost twice a day to make sure that you're on track or with your team. If you're managing a team. What's going on? Send me your updates, tell me what's pending, what's left, see if they need any help. Is there anything that you can do, any questions that you can answer that can speed up the process and support them? And then once you hit the deadline, let's make sure that we start working on the things that are pending. You know, the other deadlines that got pushed off. Now that that task is complete, that important 25% is completed. Now if you're working with a team, the good thing is that they can continue working past the deadline on the other pending items that didn't make the cut the first time around. Again, strong deadline. Follow up with them throughout each day. Guys, deadlines are tough and they're stressful, but we gotta attack them. We can't hide from them. We gotta make sure that we're on top of them and when we don't hit them, you gotta realign. Readjust now. If a delayed deadline will affect something like the expectations of Your customers, a delivery of a product or a launch of a new product, you need to communicate that. You need to make sure they know that, hey, there's gonna be a delay. We're gonna push it a little bit. And we've done this before with Webinar Ninja. And, and we explain why. We explain that we want to make sure it's perfect. We want to make sure that it's flawless and bulletproof. And they'll understand that you're prioritizing quality over speed or making money faster. It's your job to be the adult in the equation to make sure that you be the bearer of the news sometimes, but at the same time, explain that we're making a decision for the best of the company and our customers. We want to make sure that they have the right tools or the right product that's created properly. Another really important thing I need to mention is when you're working with deadlines, tight deadlines, and you're on top of your team and you're working with other people, motivation is a big part. You gotta make sure that you're a cheerleader. You motivate them. You let them know that you know the end is in sight. You see the finish line and that the work is valued. But at the same time, you gotta be tough. You gotta make sure that you say, hey, a deadline's a deadline. We gotta be on top of it. No excuses. Some people are really good at this. Some people are not. They get distracted. They worry about things that are not important with their task. They overanalyze. It can be a real detriment. So you got to make sure that they understand, hey, get back online, make sure you're focused, motivate them and let them know that this is the priority, not other things. You, as a CEO, as a leader, as the person that they're looking to for leadership has to do this. This is your job. Lead the ship, you know, the steer of the ship. To make sure that they know that this is what they have to do. They're going to get distracted. They're going to get worried about other things, ask questions that have nothing to do with the task at hand. They're going to look ahead when they don't need to. You got to keep them on course.

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To wrap up today's lesson, I want to remind you that sometimes this will happen. You're going to miss deadlines, but I say sometimes this should not be the norm. You should be hitting deadlines regularly, but often with larger projects. It's hard to predict how long something's going to take, especially if you know the deadline is two or three months in advance. There's a lot that can happen to disrupt that plan in two to three months. Hiccups, roadblocks, people getting sick, people getting tired. You know they're just worn out. And when I say people, that includes you. If you're working on your business by yourself. But you have to be ready. You have to have a plan of action like today's plan of action when you don't hit the deadline. And sometimes not hitting a deadline is actually a good thing. It's a great learning experience because it forces you to ask, what's the most important thing? What's the must have thing? In my business, in my product and my service, in my offering, what's the 20% that's gonna make the 80% difference? What am I gonna do to make sure that I do what's most important for the business? It makes you reevaluate and say, okay, this is what's really important. Let's get this done today. Everything else I would like to have and I thought I was going to get by this time. But I can deal with that later. I can cry about that later or I can add that later. Sometimes things are bigger in our heads than they actually are. Like we think. I want this to be this amazing product with all these features, when in actuality all these features are not really what people want. What they really actually want or need is probably just 20% of what you think it is. So see this as an opportunity to get laser focused. All right, that wraps up today's lesson. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed it, let us know in an itunes rating and review. Just search us on itunes and just hit review and make sure you hit the subscribe button to get all our episodes automatically. Now, last episode I mentioned that I'm going to be starting a series, an eight week series on a particular topic that a lot of you, our listeners have been asking for. A few episodes ago, I did a episode on the importance of travel, but a lot of people say, hey, I love traveling, but how do I work while I travel? So we're going to do an eight week series on working and traveling together. I'm going to give you real life examples. It's going to be sort of like my own little journaling and showing you how I work and travel at the same time, as well as what I get out of travel, what I learn along the way, what are some of the insights and the skills I learned from meeting new people, new cultures and new ways of life. It's going to be a lot of fun. I can't wait to release it. The first episode drops next week, so make sure you subscribe to get it automatically. We'll be talking about how to get prepared for travel. What are some of the things you need to do to make sure that you know when you leave, everything's in order, whether you're working by yourself or you're working with a team, how to schedule your day, what to pack, all that stuff. And we'll also talk about allocating time for work, how to get focused, how to find the right space to get things done while you're traveling. We'll talk about some business travel hacking, which basically means how do you manage, how do you balance that and how you can learn through travel? Hey, maybe I don't need to work eight hours a day. I can actually work four or three hours a day and get just as much done. Because when you're traveling, sometimes you're forced to do that. So even if you're not going to travel, you can take what I learned and apply it to your business at home or in your office today. All right, I can't wait to get that started next week. So make sure you hit subscribe. I'll check you in the next episode. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. You've heard me say it before. Entrepreneur equals problem solver. Your job is to solve problems and missed deadlines is a problem. But now you have an action plan and your job is to make sure that you're steering the ship. And when it's all said and done and you think back on that missed deadline, you're going to say, it wasn't that bad. We handled it and we made it happen. So sometimes looking forward helps you deal with the moment. All right, I'll check you in next week's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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