There is a sentence I hear often enough that I have started listening for it: “I intended to, but things got in the way.”
Things usually did get in the way. A customer needed something. Another deadline moved. The week filled up with work that also mattered. By the time the commitment came back into conversation, there was a reasonable explanation for why it had slipped.
I find myself wanting to understand what happened earlier, in the room where the commitment was made. How clearly did we agree on what would happen? What did we do to give that agreement a place in the week?
The moment the meeting moves on
Someone says they will take care of it. Heads nod. The meeting moves on. Everyone leaves with a sense that the matter has been handled.
There may still be quite a bit for the person carrying it to work out. They need to decide what “take care of it” includes, where it fits among their other responsibilities, and when the people depending on it expect to hear back. Those details can feel obvious in the meeting and become much less obvious on Wednesday afternoon.
Writing the commitment down helps. It also needs to be somewhere the people involved will return to. An agreement buried in meeting notes can be easy to lose sight of, especially when everyone is carrying several others.
This is where I think the leader carries more responsibility than the follow-up conversation often gives them. If I accepted “I’ll take care of it” and moved us along, I helped shape the agreement we are now trying to account for.
Before I ask someone what happened, I want to be able to answer a question myself: was the agreement clear enough to keep?
What the agreement needed
I want to know who owned the commitment, what they understood they were agreeing to, and when the result was needed. I also want to know when we expected to check on it.
A check gives both people a chance to find out how the work is going while there is still time to respond. It can surface a missing piece of information, a competing priority, or a decision the person needs from me. Without that moment, I may first learn there is a problem when I need the result.
A clear commitment can still be missed. An urgent issue can change what is possible, and a date that made sense on Tuesday may need reconsidering by Thursday. The agreement needs a way for that change to be brought back into the conversation, especially when other people are planning their work around it.
That makes the leader’s role ongoing. If I change someone’s priorities, I need to look with them at the commitments affected. If a decision is waiting on me, I need to recognise what my delay means for the date we agreed.
Preparing for the follow-up
Once a commitment has been missed, the gap matters. Someone may be waiting, a decision may be delayed, or work may need to be redone. There is also a sequence of events I may know very little about.
What helps me is writing three lines before the conversation: the agreement as it was actually made, the gap I observed, and the effect on the work we share.
For an illustrative example, those lines might read: “We agreed I would have the figures by Tuesday. They haven’t arrived. I need them to finish the proposal.” That gives me a straightforward place to begin, followed by a real question: “What happened?”
The preparation matters because it asks me to separate what I know from what I am assuming. I know the figures have not arrived. I still need to understand what happened to the work and what can realistically happen next.
If I struggle to write the agreement, that tells me something too. Perhaps we said “soon” and left the date open. Perhaps we discussed the work without confirming who would take it. The conversation needs to include the part I left unclear.
Try this before your next conversation
Choose one commitment you need to follow up on. Open the message or meeting note where it was made, if you have one, and write down the agreement, the observed gap, and its effect on shared work.
Keep the agreement faithful to what was said. If a date or owner was left open, acknowledge that when you begin. Name the gap and its effect, then ask the other person to walk you through what happened. Give yourself enough room to hear something you did not already know.
Before the conversation ends, agree on what happens next, who will do it, and by when. Put the next check in both calendars, and decide when either person should raise a change that could affect the commitment.
At that check, look at whether the work moved as agreed and whether any change reached you in time to respond. Those are useful things to learn about how your agreements are working. They also give you something specific to improve before the next meeting moves on.
I intended to, but things got in the way…