It’s That Time Of Year. Get Ready For The “Late” Requests To Start Rolling In

Well, we’re officially into the fourth quarter and everyone’s focused on how we’re going to end the year. And it’s predictable there will be suggestions, ideas, requests — and, yes, some demands — to do some things you hadn’t figured on.

We can view these interruptions as annoyances or distractions if we choose, but we should never be surprised. It happens every year and the end-of-year push isn’t any less urgent these days just because we’re communicating via Zoom instead of cooped up in a conference room.

The reasons AGAINST tackling something new right now are many:

• Not enough time to get it done
• People are busy doing other things and can’t be distracted
• Not in our budget
• Legal and regulatory issues that can’t be resolved in time
• Not really consistent with our business model
• Not our area of expertise

So what makes it so compelling and hard to resist?

Essentially, it’s the very nature of your relationship with the requestor: boss, co-worker, peer, close friend. (Think about the quandary of the bridesmaid asked by the bride to cut and color her hair to the bride’s specifications.)

But sometimes in business there’s another force at work that makes these intrusions look like opportunities: We need another “thing” if we’re going to finish strong.

In another post, I discussed how satisfying it is to just say “no” to requests we consider unreasonable, but also how counterproductive and even damaging that response can be.

So what do you do? Probably the worst response (and the most natural) is to shut your eyes and ears and dismiss it out of hand: “Too busy to even consider it.”

Virtually any idea is worth a few minutes of brainstorming, right? What questions should you ask?

• Is there some piece of it that can be done before year-end?
• Does it spark an idea for something new, different and less complex that can be done in a shorter time frame?
• Can we put it in the plan for next year?
• If your company can’t or shouldn’t do it, who can? This might be the time to partner up with another company who might be in a better position to get the job done. It might be worth a few hours to structure a joint venture agreement that calls for the other company to pull the laboring oar while you do what you can to provide a less demanding contribution.

USE IT NOW: Don’t default to knee-jerk responses to late requests. Be ready with a constructive decision-making process when requests that look unreasonable start coming in.