Keep people on the same page.

I am pretty sure you have heard some version of this advice where someone, at some point, be it your manager or mentor, told you how important it is to keep the stakeholders on the same page. But how often do we listen to them?

I mean, at some point, a younger version of you might have nodded that we will follow this advice, but have mumbled to yourself – Do I need to? If so, why?

If you had, and god forbid, still have those questions unanswered, this short email by Rohit to his team might just get you some answers. Without further ado, here’s the email.

This is an incident from a couple of weeks back.

It was Thursday morning,  and I was fast asleep. Suddenly, the door-bell rang and to my surprise, it was my car wash guy. He greeted me and said, “Sir, I would not be coming for the next 3-4 days”.

I was bewildered and thought – Why is he sharing that with me? Who expects a car wash guy to inform of his leave? My previous car wash guy never informed me before going on leave.

When Sunday came, a meeting was fixed with a girl [potential wife]. Now, I wanted to put on the best show and that meant having my car neat and clean[BTW I had volunteered to pick her up].

Suddenly, I remembered that my car wash guy was on leave. I hurried to a nearby car wash center and got my car cleaned up. In the end, I was able to pick her up on time.

Now, when I look back, I am thankful to my carwash guy who had intimated me beforehand. Else, I would have gotten down to leave and then would have spoiled my mood over my car not being clean enough. And maybe my date would not have gone as pleasant as it was.

Similarly, keeping people informed can help in avoiding last-minute surprises.

The people and situations could be as follows –

 

People	Situation
our teammates	not being able to attend office, coming late to office, not getting a good result when the deadline is approaching, not understood the project requirements, urgent leave, etc.
our clients	would be late in sending a deliverable, additional time required in the project, unexpected observations in project, etc.
our family members	some emergency contact number that they can use in case my phone number is not reachable, might not be able to pick up their call due to any meeting, etc.

But keeping them informed can save you from a ton of hassle later on.

BTW, the date went so well, Rohit ended up getting engaged with this beautiful girl. Everyone in his team is so happy that we want to tell everyone about it. By the way have we told you he is favorite of a lot of people inside GreyB.