While making sure your tasks are completed may seem like common sense, in professional membership associations it’s fairly common for tasks to be left open and pushed to the bottom of the pile when something more pressing comes up.
By late June many organisations are juggling a mixture of open and closed tasks. Projects that began earlier in the year may have lost some momentum now that new ideas have appeared along the way, and attention gradually shifts towards a summer break.
This time of year, it’s easy to carry unfinished pieces of work forward. When tasks don’t have that sense of urgency, they don’t demand action from you, so risk being quietly set aside for later in the year.
On a case-by-case basis, this rarely causes a problem, but when several unfinished items travel into the next season together, they can create more pressure than expected.
Work that Follows you
Unfinished work has a habit of lingering around in meeting notes and tasks lists. When the workload picks up later in the year, these partially completed tasks all tend to emerge from dormancy at the same time, ready to all pounce at the same time.
It’s not that the tasks are difficult, it’s that doing them all at the same time requires a lot of effort. More often than not it’s the mental effort of returning to a task you’ve already put away that creates the challenge. People need to remind themselves what was previously discussed, what decisions were already made, and what still needs to happen, rather than moving tasks into purgatory and forgetting about them.
Closing Small Loops
Finishing tasks completely before moving onto something else can be surprisingly valuable.
Closing a piece of work doesn’t necessarily mean finishing a huge project. It can sometimes simply mean confirming that a discussion has reached a decision, documented an outcome, or formally checked something off a list. Even small actions like confirming a date can bring useful closure.
For professional membership associations, and other organisations that rely on volunteers, this can be particularly important. Volunteers often move between different commitments throughout the year, and unfinished items can easily become disconnected from the people who originally started them.
When something is brought to a clear conclusion, it becomes easier for everyone to see what has been achieved and where attention should move next.
Visible Progress
Another advantage of finishing work properly is that it allows progress to become visible.
In many Associations, the work that takes the most effort is not always the work that produces the most obvious outcomes. Governance improvements, policy updates, membership processes or internal planning can take time to develop, yet they rarely feel like dramatic milestones.
Taking the time to acknowledge that something has been completed, helps people recognise when steady progress is being made throughout the year. This can be particularly encouraging for volunteers who may only see fragments of the bigger picture.
Choosing What to Close
Not everything can be put to bed before the summer months arrive.
Brainstorm what can be finished before staff and volunteers go away for the summer. Resolving one or two of these items can lighten the mental load that teams carry forward into the second half of the year.
A Small Habit that Makes a Difference
When the team regularly close the loop on their work, fewer decisions remain half-finished and fewer tasks come back to haunt you. Over time this helps organisations move forward with greater clarity and less frustration.
As we get deeper into summer, taking a moment to complete something that is already close to the finish line can be a simple but meaningful step. It allows people to step away knowing that at least one piece of work has been properly closed off and can make returning later feel far more manageable.
How we can Help
At Cygnul we work in partnership with our clients and are seen as trusted advisors to the Board. We can undertake the full range of membership, secretarial and bookkeeping services as well as offering advice and support to associations around the UK. If you want to explore how these services could help your organisation, please get in touch with us.
