Follow-up is the Key

It is quite important to have someone to ask you if you have done what you said you will do, a colleague told me years back while I was leading another college. It is well-known that follow-up is a key tool of an effective leader even though the intensity and frequency might vary from leader to leader. When it comes to administering an Institute of Higher Learning, it is relevant to pay stress on the follow-up element as office, faculty members, dept leadership and coordination at various levels need to be put through a reality check to see how the implementation status fares against the decisions taken. 

Follow-up as a strategy yields excellent results. The discussions and decisions of the various meetings, the directions of the guiding bodies and policy directives and government instructions, keep the plates of the leadership of the institution always full. But a huge part of the full plate will comprise of the decisions taken and policy implementation in progress. The journey of these actions planned or in progress will depend on the follow-up on the part of the leadership. The role of the Institutional leadership is to meet the lower levels of  leadership at dept or committee level to whom the work is assigned and to take stock. These micro interactions will sure help us know where we are against the plans made and the timelines set. 

An effective follow-up meeting will balance the meeting time between what's done and what remains, between appreciation for the work done so far and directions and advices regarding how to go about the work left to do. Such meetings will analyse the gains made so far and will be quick to rework the plans too, if called for. The meeting has to break up the job assigned to smaller components and take it brick by brick. Such a sharp yet quick followup will help zero in on the grey spots to lay extra effort there. Since too long and too many meetings will prove to be counterproductive, the follow-ups can be short and to the point. But it is always possible to have occasionally longer meets to have a thorough check up on the effectiveness of the programmes / events implemented. 

The success of follow-ups depend a lot on the capacity of the institutional leadership to troubleshoot and motivate. In colleges the Academic, Extension or Outreach plans are made quite often. As planning is a relatively easy part of it, the fanfare with such plans are made may be shortlived. Part of the reasons why pans of HEIs fail is not just because these are not followed up. It is because less realistic thinking, less preparation has been invested in it. A messy and unrealistic plan can be rescued by precision in follow-up often. Troubleshooting takes care of the irritants and does away with minor niggles. Those who are at the acting end will experience the ease of doing business, while the institutional leadership clears the web. Of equal importance is the motivation part. The lower level leadership, the Dept Head or the Club Coordinator of a Career Cell will sure be happy to know that they are heading in the right direction and it motivates them to keep pushing the limits. 

What can often spoil the party in some of our institutions is the leadership who arrives late on the scene. Between the grand announcement of the scheme and the final wow-moment of celebration of what has been achieved, the Principal or whoever leads at the top, will vanish. They may have fully missed the journey, but will be readily available to claim the laurels once the destination is reached. The HEI leader should also be aware of the potential roadblocks to the implementation of a decision even before the follow-up meet happens and that will render it more productive. Finally, a meeting is not always needed for all follow-ups. A question as you take your campus walks, a chat while you occasionally walk in to a dept, a reference during a drive together or a chat over a cup of chai too will serve the purpose.

Some of the following suggestions may help fine-tune the follow-up strategy of the HEIs: 

 

• Integrate time for follow-ups in the plan itself 

• Make follow-up meets brief and precise 

• Check the action taken status 

• Prepare short plans for the next stage 

• Break down targets to short components 

• Own up mistakes, if any, in the original plan 

• Give praise wherever due 

• Run the whole exercise in a positive spirit

Babu. P. K. Ph D.