There is a quiet and consistent power to deadlines. Imagine for a moment the glory days of printed news media in the mid 1980s, and you find yourself at the editor’s desk of a newspaper with a circulation in the millions. No doubt you conjure up in your mind a bustling place, full of people running around with last minute approval requests. The deadline for print is looming large, and the editor has a 10 p.m. deadline for the midnight print schedule for the morning edition. This is just the average day; tomorrow it starts all over again, another midnight deadline for the next morning edition. In order to meet this daily deadline, there would be a course of smaller incremental deadlines that had to be kept and maintained for this type of machine to run effectively. This is the mental image that I want to have when addressing this topic: deadlines.
People will resist deadlines. They will fight your desire to set them. They will attempt to break them and push past them all the time. They will look for every excuse possible to reduce the seriousness of a deadline to a trivial request with no immediate impact or consequence. They will feign ignorance and pretend that there was no gravitas behind your establishment of a deadline. This is true in every profession, across the board, everywhere deadlines are being ignored, dismissed, and marginalized in every way possible. This is so commonplace that there are entire mechanisms that technical and project management staff have developed for working with and through imposed deadlines. It has become an art form, using flamboyant and compelling terms to label your deadline as top down, ivory tower, or some other nonsense.
However, even with all this resistance, you cannot underestimate the power of the deadline. In fact, if you ever find yourself in a leadership position, the first thing that you need to do is establish a deadline for an important project straight away. You will spend weeks fighting objections, being ridiculed, and required to dodge various attempts to sideline you. However, you must stand your ground. Keep the deadline, no matter what the personal cost. Of course, make sure that everyone agrees on the workload and the time it takes to deliver this workload, then set a deadline and hold onto it. Picture yourself as a lighthouse perched on a rocky outcropping during a winter storm. You will remain vigilant, a bright light at sea. Expect that hail, wind, and rain will be thrown at you between now and the deadline. Hold your course. Whatever you do, do not agree to let that deadline slip. Doing so is akin to putting a giant neon sign on your door that says, “sucker.”
They will miss the deadline. They will miss the first, second, and perhaps the third deadline. What you need to do is start adding teeth to the deadline. You do not have the right to complain that people are not working hard enough if you are not willing to enforce a deadline. Deadlines need consequences. I recommend the following order of things. The first consequence needs to result in a loss of control, nothing more. You fully expect that deadline to be missed, but this is how you start to gain influence in an organization. You highlight the improved processes that need to be implemented to meet deadlines in the future. With luck, the team will now appreciate that you understand all of this and will gladly relinquish control of certain elements so that you can make sure the next deadline is met. Next, you need to make a statement. This is usually dismissal or removing members of the team who were not performing or who were holding everyone back. This will come as a shock to people, but quietly they will be relieved, because if you do your homework you will know the people who are holding the team back. You will start earning respect, but you will also gain something more important, your deadlines will no longer be ignored. Finally, you need to start creating deadlines that are consistent, repeating, and frequent. Think of that newspaper office. This is the bustle and buzz that you want going on in and around your office. When you are starting to go crazy because people are coming at you constantly with approvals, requests, and complaints about barriers, then you know you are doing better. Now your deadlines are real, and people are feeling pressure to meet them, which is what causes the pandemonium.
Ponder this for a minute. In every situation that I have been in, a great place to work is never effective long term. I hate to say that, because I, just like anyone else, love to be in a work environment that is pleasant. However, there is a remarkable difference between a great place to work and a work environment that you will always remember. Some of the most stressful jobs that I have had, I look back on with fondness. This is because we were on fire, and everyone had a job, and everyone was performing at a high level. We were moving mountains, quite literally. I remember those work environments. I crave being back in them, not because I loved it, but because I knew that we were a high performing team, and that is something worth being a part of.
Recently, I watched the earnings call of a company that I used to work for. They reported lackluster results again. They are not meeting the promise that they could achieve. Rather, they are finding themselves in a long slow slog into mediocrity and dismal growth. The voices of the executives were withdrawn and guarded, careful not to say anything wrong, because the nuance of their failures was difficult to wade through. I could not help but notice that one of the areas they paused on during the call was all the accolades that they have received for being a great place to work, and voted by employees as the world’s best employer, and the best workplace for a variety of stakeholders. All these are certainly valuable, but I could not avoid considering this concept. Were the deadlines met? Were the goals achieved? Most assuredly they were not, which is why they had such a depressing earnings call. This seemed to shed light on this idea, that as an employer, as a manager, as an entrepreneur, you must enforce deadlines and face the consequences. If you build a culture of missed deadlines, then you will miss your dreams. I have never met a chief executive who dreamed of one day becoming the leader of a Fortune 100 company and then found themselves spending several hours on a conference call trying to explain to investors why they missed their targets for the fourth quarter in a row.
I will leave you with this. Being a leader, an entrepreneur, is not a popularity contest. You are not going to be best friends with the people that you are leading. You are, out of necessity, required to enforce deadlines and not tolerate deviance or distraction. Celebrate results over accolades. If it makes you feel better, in several decades when you meet up with one of the former members of your team you will have a good laugh and reminisce about the good old days. When your team is wildly successful, everyone will be uncomfortable reaching further than they thought possible, but they will remember this time as one of the greatest in their professional careers.
