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“Hey Joe, would you mind reviewing the deck I just sent you and scrub it for any errors or incongruencies?” my boss asked me.
“Sure!” I said with excitement and appreciation because I got an assignment that was going to be seen by senior management.
“Feel free to make it fancy and stuff as well. I saw the presentation you built for Alex, and it looked really good,” my manager added.
I was beaming with pride. I got a high-profile assignment and complimented in the same request. I was feeling motivated, appreciated, valued...and then I fell into the ASAP vortex.
I asked my manager when he wanted it, and he said, “As soon as possible would be great!”
I’ve got to imagine many have had similar conversations where requests were made with a deadline of ASAP. I never knew all the different interpretations for one term consisting of four simple letters, A-S-A-P.
About two days after this conversation, I got an email from my boss asking me about the status of the presentation. I wrote back that it’s going well, and I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and effort. He responded, “That’s great to hear. When do you think you’ll have something to show me?”
I started to sense some urgency in his tone, so I asked him again, “When do you need it?”
He just wrote, “ASAP” with a happy face emoji.
I interpreted this in a very literal way, “as soon as possible” for me. I was working on a half dozen other projects feverishly to get them finished, so I could dedicate the time to his deck. I still felt energized and excited about the opportunity.
Now, a week had gone by, and my manager came to my desk a little stressed stating that he hadn’t seen anything yet and wondered when I’d be able to get him a version to review. I apologized and said that I only had a few minor details to wrap up on a few other projects so I could dedicate the necessary time and focus on his deck. He said that he needed to present it the following day and was hoping to get some time to review it and do a couple run throughs. I panicked. My heart sank. I realized that I had dropped the ball. I apologized and told him that I didn’t realize the urgency. I had interpreted “as soon as possible” quite literally, “as soon as possible based on my workload.” I learned that ASAP meant "drop everything and move my request to the top of your list" in my manager’s mind.
We facilitate workshops and team trainings quite often on style and various ways of working. One of the exercises we run is to have people spell out what ASAP means to them. We’ve received hundreds of interpretations over the years which can be mapped out on a timeline from “yesterday” to “right now” to “it depends on who is asking” to “it depends on the business priorities” to “sometime in the future” and so-on. The point being that this one simple phrase, nay acronym, can take on very different meanings depending upon the different ways people work.
We all have different approaches to the work we do. Some of us approach assignments with more urgency than others while some tend to focus more on accuracy or precision than speed. And still others may focus on the level, title or role when deciding how to prioritize requests. It’s not that there is a right answer to this, but these four letters, ASAP, create an inordinate amount of confusion, chaos and conflict in the workplace. So, how do we solve for it? Rules of Engagement.We can create agreements or commitments not only on the work what we do but also how we do it.
In this case, the rule of engagement we created was to stop using ASAP. Instead, we agreed that we’d provide dates and/or times moving forward for deadlines. This one minor shift us from immense frustration and disappointment.
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