I am angry that you missed your deadline
But wait, did I actually set that deadline with you in a way that you understood?
This is an actual communication that I had with a freelancer I was working with, putting together some preliminary numbers for a marketing campaign, which needed to be launched in a few days. The two of us were chatting over Slack:
Me: About Task 3, the spending-per-channel data, can you wrap this up by Thursday or Friday?
Them: I’m busy on Thursday, but I can get to Task 3 on Friday or Saturday.
Me: Before Saturday?
Them: I don’t know. I’ve got some things scheduled for the afternoon on Friday. I’m not sure how long that might go. But I can get it to you by Saturday afternoon, for sure.
Me: Look, this doesn’t have to be perfect. Don’t go overboard. Just put in what time you can on Thursday and Friday. In this case speed is more important than quality. Whatever you can do is fine.
Them: The raw numbers are meaningless. We need to do some analysis regarding which channels have worked best for you in the past.
Me: It’s okay, I plan to do some research.
Them: You don’t have any of the historical data about which channels worked for you in the past.
Me: Can you send that to me?
Them: That’s what I’m trying to explain, I need some time to dig it up.
Me: Okay, but I need to get going on this. Send me what you can, I’ll do the rest.
Them: I’ll get it to you as fast as I can.
Me: Put in what time you have this week, but then just send me whatever you have. I understand it might be imperfect, but in this case, speed is more important than being thorough.
Around 9 PM on Friday I had not heard from them, so I sent another chat message:
Me: Hey, can you please send me whatever you’ve got regarding Task 3?
Them: I told you, I can get it to you by Saturday afternoon.
Me: I told you the deadline was Friday.
Them: You never said the deadline was Friday.
Me: What I said was, whatever you have by this point, Friday night, is fine.
Them: Yeah, but you never said that Friday was the deadline.
Me: I said you should do whatever you can with whatever time you had, but then you should just send me whatever you have.
Them: Yeah, but you never said that Friday was the deadline.
Me: Okay, that’s fine, but please send me what you have.
They sent over what they’d done so far, and it was fine. I didn’t have our historical data, but I found some other data sets that were reasonable proxies and gave me a sense of what channels had works for us in the past, so I was able to complete the work over the weekend.
I admit that, while I was chatting with them on Friday, I was annoyed that they had not yet sent me the work, because I thought I’d been clear that they should send me whatever they had by Friday night. But then I rethought this whole set of communications.
Some questions worth asking:
Had I made explicit that I wanted them to stop working on Friday and send whatever they had?
Had they explicitly committed to Friday?
Had they explicitly committed to any particular standard of quality?
In the end, we both made mistakes.
If they wanted to keep me happy (we were their main client) then they should have made clear what they were willing to commit to. They could have educated me regarding exactly what they felt the trade-off was, in terms of quality versus time.
For my part, I should have made explicit that I wanted them to stop working on Friday afternoon and then simply send me whatever they had at that point. I should have taken the time to educate them about why, in this case, time was more important than quality (we were being offered a generous discount by the ad platform, but only if we started spending money before the end of the month, which was coming up on Monday).
When it comes to deadlines, there are six questions to consider:
Did you make the deadline explicit?
Did you explain why the deadline was important?
Did you explain what level of quality was needed, or what test would be used to determine that a task was done?
Did they commit to the deadline?
Did they demonstrate that they understood why the deadline was important?
Were they clear about what level of quality was needed?
As a practical matter, a deadline does not exist until you’ve made it explicit and the other person has understood it and committed to it.