Years ago I worked closely with someone who often said “Nothing gets done until someone works on it.” At first it seemed an odd thing to say, because of how obvious it is. Of course someone has to work on something to get it done. How else would work get done?

Over time, the meaning behind the phrase became more clear. When you repeatedly consider that nothing gets done until someone works on it, it starts to seep into your consciousness. Suddenly it starts showing up all over.

Is there a project or task that’s behind schedule? Which specific element is not getting done quickly enough? Is it held up by dependency on something else? In many cases, when you get to the root cause, it turns out that there was some specific thing that was simply not being worked on. The larger the project, the more likely this is to happen.

There are plenty of reasons this may not have been actively worked on. First, it’s possible no one knew they were the one who was supposed to be working on it. It’s also possible the person who should have worked on it didn’t understand the urgency or priority behind it and were instead working on something else. In some cases, that person working on something else may actually be doing the right thing, if that something else really is a higher priority. Another possibility is that someone knew they should be working on it, but they didn’t know how to do it and weren’t comfortable asking for help.

Every one of these potential reasons for delay represents a leadership failure.

If no one knew they were supposed to work on this thing, it’s a failure to prioritize, communicate, or both. Depending on at what level and scale these things are happening, it can even be because of executive leadership failures resulting in organizational structures so divorced from optimal that it becomes impossible for mid-level leaders to know who should be working on what.

If the person or team who should’ve been working on it didn’t understand the urgency or priority and were instead working on something else, that is again a failure of prioritization and communication. Why did this person not know what the relative priorities were?  When a leader changes priorities without communicating those changes with their team, this is often the result. Worse, when a leader establishes a history of rapidly changing priorities, they may end up in a situation where their people ignore all talk of priorities and just set their own. As leaders, we need to clearly explain what needs to be accomplished (the vision), why it needs to be done, and what role each person has in ensuring it gets done.

There’s a flipside to the previous case. Sometimes the person who didn’t prioritize the thing you’re expecting be done was actually correct not to prioritize it. If you as the leader had previously told them something else was prioritized over this, then they were listening to you. Ask yourself why you now think this should be the priority, and why you expected this person to know your mind had changed when you hadn’t even told them yet. “Assuming telepathy” is something of which I’ve found myself guilty. It’s a lot easier to root out when you know to look for it, and where to spot the signs. At the very least, don’t berate the person for having listened to you rather than reading your mind.

Alternatively, it’s also possible the person who prioritized this lower than you expected was right, and that you did not tell them to do that. Suppose they were told by someone else they should reasonably expect to listen to. In that case, your approach should be similar to the paragraph above, but with the added element of asking yourself why they were put in a position of receiving competing directions.

If this person determined on their own that something else should take priority, make sure you understand why they thought this. It’s very possible they’re correct, in which case they should be commended on their judgment and initiative, yet you also need to establish with them a standard around communicating those decisions to you so you aren’t blindsided again.

If they made this choice on their own and were wrong, understand why they thought this was the right call before reprimanding them. If the reasons it was the wrong call depend on things this person didn’t know, consider ways to better communicate the big picture when communicating why something needs to be done. Be very specific and deliberate with how you correct this particular behavior. It is generally not in your best interest to punish an employee for exercising good judgment, even if that judgment was counter to your own. Instead, point out to them why in this case that was the wrong call, and what you or they can do differently in the future to avoid this outcome (communication from you to them, from them to you, formalized prioritization standards, etc.).

The previous five paragraphs all deal with slightly different versions of a project or task not getting the attention it needed due to its priority compared other tasks. If you start seeing multiple instances of these pop up, you may need to shift your focus from the more detailed questions above to the more pressing question of why your team has so much more workload than it has capacity.

The final potential cause in our list was that whoever was supposed to be working on this task simply didn’t know how to do it and wasn’t comfortable asking. This represents a leadership failure on two fronts.

The first is why was this task assigned to someone who didn’t know how to do it? If it was knowingly done as a training exercise, they should have a partner or resource to work with. If it’s because this particular thing is something no one knows how to do, how did you end up with this deadline and what are you doing to help this person meet it? If you as a leader unknowingly put someone without the requisite knowledge or abilities on the task, first determine why you didn’t know that. Did you fail to understand the complexity or requirements of the task you were delegating, or did you fail to understand the person’s capabilities?

The second failure is why was this not fixed earlier? There are two different and easy things any leader should be doing, either of which is sufficient to prevent this scenario. One is to proactively identify when an employee is stuck with something and get them the help they need, even if they haven’t asked for it. The second is to establish an environment in your team or department where no one is scared to ask for help.

“Nothing gets done until someone works on it” is a simple, obvious, uncontroversial phrase that nonetheless prevents tremendous amounts of pain when truly internalized. As leaders, when we proactively consider that in order for anything to get done we need someone to work on it, we remind ourselves to ensure that there is someone who can work on it, they know to work on it, they know why it needs to be done, and they know what to do to escalate if they’re unable to work on it. With all of those things laid out in advance, we can more often avoid the entire project delay post-mortem.