Lesson Learned…again and again

I always forget this once in awhile, so here is a post to remind me.

I hate not getting responses to my e-mails. With long distance and time zones, most of my correspondences are done in e-mail. I hate it when everything is waiting on a response and that person is just taking their own sweet time getting to it.

In this last case it wasn’t super urgent. I guess maybe that’s why I forgot. I am booking my travel of March and April, and I worked out everything except the final ok from the SJ boss. I waited for four days for a response and in turn other people were waiting for me.

This morning I sent an e-mail and said:” From talking to everyone involved, this is the best choice, so this is what I’m going to do. I’m going ahead unless you tell me otherwise”. It’s ok. My other boss (I actually have three) supports me on it. In about an hour SJ boss responded and said ok.

The lesson: be decisive (an informed decision) and tell people what you are going to do and if they disagree they should let you know. If they agree it doesn’t matter because you have started already. If not, the response will be swift because they know if they don’t respond things are going to happen. Compared this to asking people to support your decision, then there is no urgency to reply right away and you end up waiting forever.