Philippines staffing guide
Review the Assistant's 'Waiting on You' List Every Friday
A weekly pass over owner-dependent work exposes delays that look like assistant slowness but are really decision debt.
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When work is late, the first question is usually about the assistant's speed. Often the real cause is a decision the owner has not made. The assistant is waiting for a price, an approval, a file, or a yes. A Friday review of that waiting list turns a vague feeling of slowness into a concrete set of owner actions.
Keep one list of owner-dependent work
Every task that cannot progress without the owner goes on the same list, whether the dependency is a decision, an approval, a document, or access. Include the date the dependency was created and the consequence of further delay. Do not keep separate lists in chat, email, and a notebook. The list should be short enough to read in one sitting.
Separate blocked from merely idle
A blocked task has a named dependency and a next action that belongs to someone else. An idle task is waiting for capacity, not a decision. Mixing the two makes the owner feel blamed for everything. Label each item as decision, approval, information, access, or capacity. Then the conversation can focus on the category that is actually stalling.
Ask for a recommendation with the question
The owner should not have to research the item during the review. Each line should include the assistant's recommendation, the evidence behind it, and the risk of each option. If the assistant cannot recommend because the information is missing, say which fact would change the answer. This turns the review into a series of quick choices instead of a new project.
Set a default and a deadline
For each item, record what will happen if the owner does not respond by a stated date. The default should be safe and reversible: hold, send a factual acknowledgment, or continue with the approved option. A default is not authority to make a protected decision. It simply prevents silence from becoming an accidental decision in the wrong direction.
Close items with the decision and the date
When the owner answers, record the decision, the date, and who was informed. Keep the closed items for a few weeks so the assistant can check consistency and the owner can see how often the same question returns. A repeated question is a candidate for a standing rule or a clearer intake field.
Use the pattern to redesign the week
At the end of the month, group the closed items by cause. If most are approvals, move the approval earlier in the process. If most are information requests, fix the source document. If most are access delays, escalate to the administrator. The goal is not an empty list every Friday; it is a shorter list of higher-quality questions.