Sondra finished her project over the weekend.

“Last week, you assigned this task to Dale, but you ended up doing it,” I observed. I could tell she was very pleased with the project result, but miffed that she spent the weekend working when Dale had all of last week to work on it.

“I thought a lot about what you said about being more explicit about my deadline. Next time, I will try to remember that,” Sondra replied.

“More than that, the target completion time is essential to the task assignment. Dale gets all kinds of assignments. To complete them, he has to use his own discretion, primarily about pace and quality. Most of the decisions he makes are about pace and quality. Without a target completion time, he has no frame of reference in which to make his decisions. His ASAP will ALWAYS be different than your ASAP. ASAP is not a target completion time.”

Sondra smiled. I took a look at her project. It was really very good. She will make her client meeting today and life will go on.