My system for e-mail follow-ups

One of the the biggest challenges I have at work is managing follow-ups;  Something I've asked someone to do for me.  Some information that I've asked for.  Something I need for that 10:00 meeting.

It's not always a challenge.  There are a set of colleagues I know will always follow-up in a timely manner with the information or task nailed.  I really appreciate these people!

For the others, I needed to create a simple and efficient system for tracking and following up on requests.  To be fair, I am sure there are a multitude of good reasons for people not responding to my e-mail requests;  People don't have the same sense of urgency.  People may not understand the request.  People have other higher priorities...  I completely understand.  On the other had, I have a job to do too and at times, it requires things from other people.  Thus my need for a follow-up system.

For me, Microsoft Outlook works best as most of my follow up items are e-mails.  My system is pretty simple.  It consists of a folder called @Follow-up and folders below it with the name of the person I expect to respond.  Simple, yet efficient.

For example, when I send an e-mail to John Smith, I save a copy of that e-mail in a folder called @Follow-up\John Smith.  Each week (during my weekly review) I check each of my @Follow-up folders and take action accordingly.  I detail this system in an article titled Effective Delegation Using Microsoft Outlook.

To automate things a bit, I created an Outlook rule.  The rule says; If I create an email with the text "/fx" in it, file it in my @Follow-up folder.  Each day, I open my @Follow-up folder and file the e-mails in the appropriately named sub-folder. 
 

To create this rule in Outlook follow these steps:

1. From the Tools menu, select Rules and Alerts...
2. Click the New Rule Button
3. On the next screen, select Start from a blank rule, click check message after sending, then click Next
   
4. On the next screen, check with specific words in the subject or body. Then, in the lower pane, click specific words.  On the specific words screen, enter /fx, click Add, and click OK.  Then, click Next.
    
5. Lastly, check the box that says move a copy to the specified folder.  Then, in the lower pane, click the word specified to select the @Follow-up folder.
   
6. Click Finish.

Now any message with the text "/fx" in it will be copied to the @Follow-up folder for review/filing later.  If I don't want people to see the "/fx" in the e-mail, I can change the color of the text to match the background.

Simple and efficient!