Agreements Archives - Page 3 of 6

When to say No

“When to say No”, from the Mayo Clinic website on stress management:

Focus on what matters most. Examine your obligations and priorities before making any new commitments.

Weigh the yes-to-stress ratio. Is the new activity you’re considering a short- or long-term commitment?

Take guilt out of the equation. Don’t agree to a request you would rather decline out of guilt or obligation.

Sleep on it. Before you respond, take a day to think about the request and how it fits in with your current commitments.

How to say no.

Say no. The word no has power. Don’t be afraid to use it. Be careful about using substitutes phrases, such as “I’m not sure” or “I don’t think I can.”

Be brief. State your reason for refusing the request, but don’t go on about it. Avoid elaborate justifications or explanations.

Be honest. Don’t fabricate reasons to get out of an obligation. The truth is always the best way to turn down a friend, family member or co-worker.

Be respectful. Many good causes land at your door, and it can be tough to turn them down. Complimenting the group’s effort while saying that you can’t commit shows that you respect what they’re trying to accomplish.

Be ready to repeat. You may need to refuse a request several times before the other person accepts your response. Calmly repeat your no, with or without your original rationale, as needed.

Turnaround Time

The amount of time taken to fulfill a request.

In computing, turnaround time is the total time taken between the submission of a task for execution and the return of the complete output to the customer/user.

If bringing in an item for repair, be sure to find out the turnaround time so you will know how long it will be before the item is ready for you to pick up after being repaired.

The total time consumed in the round trip of a ship, aircraft, vehicle, etc.

Aviation. the elapsed time between an aircraft’s arrival at an airfield terminal and its departure.

The process of completing or the time needed to complete a task, especially one involving receiving something, processing it, and sending it out again:

Six minutes late

In 2013, Denver Broncos football player Elvis Dumervil signed a three-year contract with a pay-cut and then had trouble sending in the paperwork. It arrived at the team headquarters six minutes late.

In those six minutes, his team managers, thinking that Dumervil would not accept the pay-cut, decided to remove him from the team rather than keep him at the higher salary rate. If he had just followed up with his managers, and let them know that he had signed the documents and was in the process of sending them, he would probably still have his job.

Follow up (verb): to follow with something similar, related, or supplementary; to maintain contact with (a person) so as to monitor the effects of earlier activities or treatments; to pursue in an effort to take further action. First known use was in 1767.

Still a Priority

An additional purpose of follow up in the American context is to signal to the other parties that the agreement is still of high priority. No or late follow up can be interpreted as a signal that the agreement is no longer important to the other party.

Americans place a very high value on flexibility, on the ability to respond to the needs of the market, of customers, of changing situations. Big decisions are broken down into smaller ones. Isolating individual decisions allows for rapid reaction as well as rapid revision. Up to the minute overview of agreements is essential.

Follow-up is omnipresent in American life. The preference setting of email programs, social network accounts, as well as information sources can be set so that information is pushed immediately to the user.

Most doctors offices send out reminders to patients of their upcoming appointments via traditional mail, email and even voicemail. When one turns on the television five minutes prior to the show they want to watch, one sees a reminder indicating that the program they are want to watch is about to be shown. Banks offer depositors the option of immediate notification via email or text message of any changes to their balance.

Follow-up is in many cases simply a reminder.

Optimal e-mail frequency

Under the title Optimum Follow-up Frequency for New Leads Samuel Smith, a consultant and blogger on business and online marketing, posted the following advice:

„A good e-mail marketing effort doesn’t inundate your customers with hard sales pitches. Following up quickly is the first step. Schedule your first follow-up email to go out two hours after your customer submits his or her information.

From here, you may want to gradually slow your e-mail frequency and aim for about three content emails for one purely promotional email. Depending on your budget, you could aim, at the high end, for sending four emails a week, but with a smaller budget, you can send an email every two or three days and have similar success.

Once a potential customer has been receiving email from you for a couple of months, it’s okay to drop off the number of emails to once a week. The optimum e-mail frequency reminds customers several times over that your product has value to them.“

They’ll remember your product.

“Just say no“

The American reluctance to say no starts very early in life. Even children have difficulty using this word. It was this reluctance that prompted the War on Drugs campaign to encourage children to avoid drugs with the slogan Just Say No (to drugs) during the 1980s and 1990s. As difficult as it might seem to believe, many American children would never have considered just saying no as an option without someone telling them explicitly.

Laboratory Turnaround Time

A report of the National Insitute of Health from November 2007 states:

Quality can be defined as the ability of a product or service to satisfy the needs and expectations of the customer. Laboratories have traditionally restricted discussion of quality to technical or analytical quality, focusing on imprecision and inaccuracy goals.

Clinicians, however, are interested in service quality, which encompasses total test error (imprecision and inaccuracy), availability, cost, relevance and timeliness. Clinicians desire a rapid, reliable and efficient service delivered at low cost.

Of these characteristics, timeliness is perhaps the most important to the clinician, who may be prepared to sacrifice analytical quality for faster turnaround time. This preference drives much of the proliferation of point-of-care testing seen today.

Renege

Going back on an agreement is so common in American culture that there are many words and phrases to describe this action. Some of these include:

Abrogate – To end or cancel an agreement in a formal and official way; to fail to do what is required (such as a responsibility). From Latin abrogates: ab- + rogare to ask, propose a law. First known use: 1526. Example: The U.S. Congress can abrogate old treaties that are unfair to Native Americans.

Back Out – To withdraw especially from a commitment or contest. First known use: 1807. Example: She backed out of her offer to help with the wedding plans.

Bail Out – To parachute from an aircraft; to abandon a harmful or difficult situation. First known use: 1930. Example: If the negotiations don’t work, we may decide to bail out of our contract.

Cop Out – To back out (as of an unwanted responsibility; to avoid or neglect problems, responsibilities, or commitments. First known use: 1952. Example: Don’t cop out on your promise to pay for dinner.

Go Back On – To be treacherous or faithless to; betray; to fail to keep; renege on. First known use: 1859. Example: He went back on his promises.

Pull Out – Leave, depart; withdraw. First known use: 1855. Example: The company manager decided to pull out of her contract when it stopped being profitable.

Recant – To publicly say that you no longer have an opinion, belief, etc. that you once had. From Latin recantare: re- + cantare to sing. First known use: 1535. Example: Witnesses threatened to recant their testimony when the court released their names to the paper.

Renege – To refuse to do something that you promised or agreed to do. From Medieval Latin renegare. First known use: 1548. Example: My friend promised to help me move, only to renege the next day.

Take Back – to make a retraction of; withdraw. First known use: 1775. Example: I take back what I said about the business: they’re not as amazing as I thought they were.

Weasel Out – To evade a responsibility, especially in a despicable manner; renege. Example: I agreed to help my neighbor, now I just need to find a way to weasel out of it.

Withdraw – To remove (money) from a bank account; to take (something) back so that it is no longer available; to take back (something that is spoken, offered, etc.). From Middle English: with + drawn to draw. First known use: 13th Century. Example: After difficulties with communication, the customer decided to withdraw from his contract with the company.

Persistent e-mail follow-up

The following dialogue was posted on ask(dot)metafilter(dot)com in March 2011. It gives insight into how Americans view follow-up.

Question: “What is the best way to word my persistent e-mail follow-ups with non-responsive colleagues?”

I work for an agency that employs about 180 people and the agency’s role is to regulate a technical sector. My role is to respond to the general public’s enquiries. I have to get exact legal/technical wording from other staff. I find staff will sometimes not reply to my enquiries for days and weeks. I’m near the bottom of the pile at the organization and so I have no authority to order anyone to help me.

I send my enquiries to staff over e-mail and need to continue to do so. I am not looking for suggestions about stopping into people’s offices in person or talking over the phone. The nature of the work doesn’t really allow for this option.

How frequently should I follow-up with people for their responses? How should I word my 2nd, 3rd and 4th e-mail follow-ups? What has worked for you when your work depends on the actions of a higher-up colleague, but you don’t want to be a pest?”

Responses:

“If you can’t make phone calls or drop by the office, can you IM them? If you can’t IM, what I’ve found starts getting attention is cc’ing various people if the initial person doesn’t respond.”

“I’d send a follow up daily. Perhaps at different times of the day. Maybe people get swamped first thing in the morning and might respond better in the afternoon.”

“Every follow up after the first, cc additional people that might be able to respond or get things moving (whether it’s a supervisor or not). This will almost always get SOMEONE involved. But don’t cc a bunch of people from the beginning because often people will think someone else will take care of it if it’s sent to a ton of people.”

“Phone calling just really gets people’s attention. It will be more embarrassing for the person and demonstrate your seriousness and persistence in the way one email in a giant inbox with hundreds of emails on a non-urgent (to them) matter never can.”

“I have a colleague who isn’t shy about bolding key lines in a severe email, like ‘This is my third request. This response is needed by Friday at the latest.’ You can try this, but even so, it’s easier to ignore than a voice or face communicating directly with you.”

Firefighting

The first volunteer firehouse was developed in 1736 by founding father Benjamin Franklin. Many early American presidents served as volunteer firefighters, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Buchanan.

People who witnessed fires but didn’t help to extinguish them were often mocked and ridiculed. In the early 1800s, Marina Betts, serving as a volunteer firefighter, would dump buckets of water over the heads of bystanders who watched the fires instead of helping to end them.

Full-time paid firefighters didn’t exist in the US until 1850. There still aren’t many people who are paid to do this job, and today, more than 70% of all American firefighters are volunteers. In fact, volunteer firefighters are considered so prestigious that firefighter is the 6th most common answer that American children give to the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?”