The Not-So-Easy Button #2 – SCN Encourager 8/6/2013

You may turn your leadership meetings into a lively quiz bowl tournament.

Or maybe even a Jeopardy reality show.

But that’s really not how I’m recommending you use these buttons.

Monday’s Encourager featured the Staple’s “easy” button as an effective visual and I suggested that we school communicators deserve a few customized buzzer-buttons of our own.

And I want to assure all of our finance director friends that this morning’s Button #2 is “budget neutral,” as are the remaining recommended buttons for the rest of the week.

So there’s no need to begin calling your legislators for more money. (Yet.)

Like Monday’s button, Button #2 also uses fewer letters than the well-known “easy” button. (and cutting down on letters and words is never “easy” for me… don’t you know it!)

Button #2 is simply the word “by” with a question mark.

Oh yeah, I guess you can’t miss this off to the left there. Sorry. I didn’t mean to be the chief-communicator-of-the-obvious.

But there’s something not so obvious – or routinely considered a strategic resource – and this is the power of a deadline.

This is what the “by?” represents.

Just placing a deadline on the calendar typically brings to a project an increased level of action, imagination, and cooperation – even in situations where one or all of these were previously lagging.

A deadline amplifies accountability.

Under the positive tension of a clear deadline, co-workers who march to the proverbial “different drummer” will frequently pick up their pace in tune with the accelerated tempo.

By? reminds you to consider deadlines as effective motivators, not after-thoughts.

By? reminds me that I really really do not like deadlines at all.

Unfortunately, deadlines keep things on course and are not overly influenced by run-of-the-mill excuses.

And I say “unfortunately” because “the creative excuse” is one of the few areas identified as a unique strength on my Meyers-Briggs test.

Just my luck.

Tom Page, SCN