Follow Up!

As the famous saying goes, “ideas are a dime-a-dozen, but the men and women who implement them are priceless”.

The world is full of people with great ideas motivated with the best of intentions and yet the majority of them never seem to perform. Such people will invariably make poor leaders.

NOTHING GREAT CAN EVER BE ACCOMPLISHED WITHOUT FOLLOWING UP!

What makes a good follow-up?

1. Listen
We must learn to listen. We need to have the patience to hear every detailed concern about challenges that our peers, staff, managers, customers and leaders face in the field. By listening, we can genuinely appreciate what others are going through and become motivated to do something about the problem.

2. Involve others to help formulate the solution
There are many perspectives in life and we all need to hear different ideas or solutions on how we can get things done. After hearing all sides, we can decide what course of action is best to take.

3. Follow-up and follow through
This is only possible if you know where you’re going! It is only possible if you have a goal and you have shared that same goal to the people in your team.

Build a program in your department where you make it a point to hear opinions, comments, or suggestions from your team. Such feedback processes should be programmed into our business culture. This will help us to listen carefully to what people have to say about us.

What is more important is that we gain an indication of an action plan in response to what we have heard. Feedback and following up like this allows us to:

1. Analyse and implement a possible solution
2. Test the solution with selected target groups
3. Take results back to the team
4. Enlist the full support of everyone on the team
5. Implement effective changes

Please take a moment to ponder… if we learn to follow-up and to follow-through properly, then we can all make the necessary changes to improve our company.

A simple follow through of ideas is what will get things done.

Sincerely,

Joseph Bismark
Group Managing Director, QI Ltd