Every event organiser knows the feeling. You've handed off a task - booking the AV crew, briefing the caterer, finalising the run-of-show - to someone perfectly capable of getting it done. But you still need to know how it's going. Not because you don't trust them. Because the outcome lands on you.
So what do you do? You ping them on Slack. You ask in a stand-up. You drop in on the document and hope the last edit timestamp tells you something. None of it scales. And all of it adds friction to the person actually doing the work.
There's a better way to stay informed: watch the task, not the person
We've just added watchers to Checklists (our project management tool) in our event software. If a task isn't yours but you want to follow its progress, add yourself as a watcher. You'll get notified when something changes - without taking on the task or interrupting whoever owns it. You can also add other watchers: a client who wants to know when their hero supplier confirms, a manager keeping an eye on a critical milestone, a colleague who needs to act the moment your task lands.
It's a small feature with a real shift behind it. Watchers turn a private to-do list into a transparent feed of progress for everyone with a stake in it. The owner still owns the task. But the people who care about the outcome don't have to chase it.
A few places this earns its keep:
- Tasks you've delegated but are accountable for at the board or client level
- Cross-team dependencies, where one person's "done" unblocks another person's "start"
- Critical-path items you don't want to micromanage, but absolutely can't miss
- Stakeholders who shouldn't be assigned the task, but should know when it moves
Try it at your next event. Less asking. More doing.
Source: Photo: iStockPhoto 1622684192
