In partnership with
Welcome back to Beyond Deadlines newsletter—a free perk for people looking to improve in Planning and Scheduling. Each week, we provide tactics, prompts, jobs and food for thought. We want you to succeed today, tomorrow and throughout the rest of your career.
Thinking about your relationships from the perspective of the job to be done is the best way to understand what’s important to the people who mean the most to you. It allows you to develop true empathy. Asking yourself “What job does my spouse most need me to do?” gives you the ability to think about it in the right unit of analysis.
How much could AI save your support team?
Peak season is here. Most retail and ecommerce teams face the same problem: volume spikes, but headcount doesn't.
Instead of hiring temporary staff or burning out your team, there’s a smarter move. Let AI handle the predictable stuff, like answering FAQs, routing tickets, and processing returns, so your people focus on what they do best: building loyalty.
Gladly’s ROI calculator shows exactly what this looks like for your business: how many tickets AI could resolve, how much that costs, and what that means for your bottom line. Real numbers. Your data.
Stop Asking "What's Your Percent Complete?"
You've heard it a thousand times.
"We're 90% done."
Three days later they're still at 90%. The schedule slips. The handoff fails. And you're left explaining why the critical path just blew up.
Here's the fix: Stop asking the person doing the work. Start asking the person waiting for it.
The Successor Led Statusing Protocol
Instead of interviewing the foreman running Activity A, you interview the foreman responsible for Activity B. The one who needs that space to be ready.
Why does this work?
Because the successor doesn't care about effort. They care about outcomes. They'll tell you exactly what "done" actually looks like.
How to Make It Work
First, identify the critical handoffs in your next two week lookahead. Don't do this for every task. Focus on the 5 to 10 handoffs where one day of slippage cascades through the entire MEP sequence.
Before your update meeting, ask each successor: "What are the three specific conditions that must be met for you to start without interruption?"
The electrical lead might say: "The slab needs to be swept. Overhead hangers need to be torqued. Lighting must be energized."
Now you have a real definition of done. Not a percentage guess.
In your scheduling meeting, skip the predecessor entirely. Ask the successor: "Based on what you saw on site this morning, are you still on track to take over that space Thursday?"
If they say no, you just identified a real problem. Now you can pivot the conversation to solving it instead of chasing phantom progress.
Make It Visible
When handoffs get messy, add a zero day milestone in P6 called "Handoff Ready" with a finish to start relationship. This makes the friction visible to everyone, including the owner.
You stop being a bookkeeper. You become a production controller.
The best schedulers I've worked with don't ask how much work got done. They ask whether the next crew can actually start.
That's the difference between tracking activity and managing flow.
Successor-Ready Handoff Checker for P6 Schedules (Excel or PDF)
Act like a senior construction scheduler and production controller who uses the Successor-Led Statusing Protocol to status schedules by validating handoffs (not % complete).
Goal: Analyze the attached schedule file (Excel or PDF) to (1) extract each activity with float and successor logic, then (2) produce a prioritized follow-up list with a successor-led question to ask the right person.
Process (follow in order):
Ingest the file.
If Excel: read the activity table(s).
If PDF: extract the activity table(s) across all pages.
If any key field is missing, set it to null and note “Not found in source” (do not guess).
Build an “Activity Extraction Table” with these columns:
Activity_ID
Activity_Name
Area/Location (or WBS) (nullable)
Start_Date (nullable)
Finish_Date (nullable)
Duration (nullable)
Total_Float (nullable)
Free_Float (nullable)
Predecessors (IDs, relationship types if present) (nullable)
Successors (IDs, relationship types if present) (nullable)
Responsible_Party (trade/owner) (nullable)
Identify “follow-up candidates” using these triggers (use all that apply):
Total_Float <= 0 OR Free_Float <= 0
Any float trending tight (low float even if positive; call out threshold you used)
Activities starting or finishing in the next 14 calendar days relative to the schedule Data Date / Status Date (if present; otherwise use the latest date in the file and state the assumption)
Handoffs where a 1-day slip would ripple into MEP or other critical strings (infer from successor chains and near-zero float)
Apply the Successor-Led approach:
For each candidate predecessor activity A, find its immediate successor activity B (primary successor on the critical/lowest-float chain if multiple).
Create a successor-led follow-up entry that targets the owner of B (the person waiting on the handoff), not the performer of A.
Do NOT ask for percent complete. Focus on “successor-ready” conditions.
Output (exactly two sections): A) Activity Extraction Table (Markdown table; include all extracted activities). B) Follow-up List (ranked highest risk first). For each item include:
Predecessor (ID + Name)
Successor (ID + Name)
Total_Float / Free_Float (both)
Why it’s on the list (bullets; reference the triggers)
Who to interview (successor responsible party; if unknown, say “Unknown”)
Successor-led question (1–2 sentences, specific, includes the planned takeover date/time if available; otherwise reference the successor start date)
Finish with a brief “Top 3 bottlenecks to resolve first” bullet list (no more than 3 bullets). Take a deep breath and work on this problem step-by-step.
Company - ArchKey Solutions
Location - Regional Office or Remote
Company - Bechtel
Location - United States
Company - G&E Partners
Location - North America
We have no connection to these jobs or companies. Our goal is simply to help you land the job of your dreams.
This week’s episode we dive into Project Leadership. Watch or Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Youtube.
Thank you for reading.
Check out Micah, Greg and Beyond Deadlines on LinkedIn.
Sign up for our LinkedIn newsletter.
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel.
Listen to the podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Visit our website.
See you next week,