Too little
The finished ticket
“It says closed; our part is done.”
A status label substitutes for the intended result.
Diligence
Give an uncelebrated institutional repair the care you would give a visible initiative.
Readiness to sustain due care in worthwhile effort.
Diligence sustains due care in worthwhile effort. Public work includes tasks whose value becomes visible mainly when they are neglected. Assigning a repair, sending a request and closing a ticket are different events. Diligence follows the relevant work far enough to know whether the intended result occurred, while keeping effort proportionate.
Diligence gives a repair that reaches the people waiting for it
The repair request is marked CLOSED. The public noticeboard it concerns still has a loose door, and the latest opening hours have blown into a hedge. You reopen the record, find the missing handoff and confirm the repair after it is done. The ticket had reached its destination rather sooner than the work. Now the hours can remain where people look for them.
Finding the balance in Diligence
An administrative record reports completion while the public-facing repair remains unfinished.
A fitting response
Care through completion
“Confirm the repair, identify the handoff and update the record.”
The process reconnects with the service it exists to support.
Pursued too far
Checking without proportion
“Personally inspect every minor task forever.”
Unbounded checking consumes capacity needed for other worthwhile work.
A reliable completion report may be enough for an ordinary task. The point is proportionate assurance, not making distrust the permanent operating method.
What Diligence makes possible
People encounter dependable services instead of having to discover where each internal handoff failed. Careful completion also leaves useful records for the next person, reducing repeated work. A modest repair can thereby improve both the present service and the institution’s ability to look after it.
Diligence in ordinary life
A shared request
Check that the person expected to act actually received the necessary information.
A useful handoff
Leave the next person the current state, unresolved point and relevant contact rather than only the label “done.”
Nearby virtues, different work
Perseverance
Perseverance continues through setbacks. Diligence concerns the care given to the work, including ordinary steps that are easy to overlook.
Prudence
Prudence chooses which work is worth the cost. Diligence follows that worthwhile work with due care.
Diligence and its counterfeits
The immaculate log
Perfectly maintained records can counterfeit Diligence when nobody checks whether they describe completed work. Let the record answer to the result.
Visible busyness
A crowded diary is a counterfeit of Diligence when activity is valued above care. Complete the consequential step, even if it creates less display.
How to cultivate Diligence
Define what completion means for the people using the result.
Identify the handoff most likely to lose the task.
Use proportionate confirmation, and stop checking when there is a sufficient basis.
Try it today
Check one small task you marked finished. Confirm that its intended recipient can actually use the result.
Questions worth returning to
- What would count as completion outside our record system?
- Where would a missing handoff leave the user?
Quotations and further reading
Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.
We must learn and build and learn again through the building, or we must build and learn and build again through the learning.
Follett presents thought and action as mutually corrective. Following the repair into actual use supplies the information that an administratively closed ticket cannot provide by itself.
I sent one of these papers to each house, and in a day or two went round to see who would subscribe an agreement to pay these sixpences; it was unanimously sign’d, and for a time well executed.
Benjamin Franklin · The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin · Part III
The paper described a paid arrangement for regularly sweeping a market pavement. Franklin then followed the proposal through to commitments and execution; his qualification “for a time” also prevents the episode from becoming a claim of permanent success.
The perplexing experiences of the actual administration, however, have a genuine value of their own.
Jane Addams · Democracy and Social Ethics · Chapter VII — Political Reform
The chapter distinguishes a reputation for reform from the hard work of meeting needs and improving institutions. Following a repair through its awkward handoffs produces practical knowledge that announcing completion cannot supply.
Go before the people with your example, and be laborious in their affairs.
Confucius · The Analects · Book XIII, chapter I, section 1 · Translated by James Legge
Asked about government, Confucius joins example with work on the people’s affairs. The repair record needs that practical attention after the easy declaration of completion.
It is not an easy undertaking to obtain it and it cannot be carried forward without conscious and well-defined effort.
Jane Addams · Newer Ideals of Peace · Chapter VIII
“It” refers to the social order Addams has just described, which nurtures liberty, growth and varied group life. Public goods need defined effort; the repair should have a next step rather than a hopeful status label.
The business of the elective body is not to do the work, but to see that it is properly done, and that nothing necessary is left undone.
John Stuart Mill · Considerations on Representative Government · Chapter XV
Mill is distinguishing elected oversight from execution by administrators. Following a repair through does not mean personally doing every job; it means checking that the responsible handoffs actually lead to usable completion.
The course has a triple advantage; it avoids omissions and neglect, saves your labour when once done, performs the labour out of court when you have leisure, rather than in court when you have not.
Lincoln has described making examinations and retaining their results where they will be needed. Diligence includes arranging the work so that a later handoff can use it, rather than repeatedly recovering what an earlier step omitted.
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Practice this collection
Choose this approved collection as an optional workbook program, or select individual virtues in My Virtues.