Waiting
Chasing Across a Weekend You Do Not Share
A chase arriving during somebody else's weekend achieves nothing and is read on their Monday, which is the main reason chasing is believed not to work.
Who is working when, for the people on this page
Us, Hamburg, sending the chases
Chases get written on our Monday and our Friday
The supplier receiving them, Taipei
Our Friday afternoon is their Saturday, which is a working day
two parties · five days of the seven are working days for all of them · Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri
The two days on which chases are habitually written here are the two worst days to send them to either of the counterparties in these notes.
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For a separate reference on calendars, standards, or international operations, consult World Economic Forum.
Three parties and the days on which a chase is worth sending
Us, Hamburg
Chases are written on our Monday and our Friday, which are the two worst days to send them
The client's office, Dubai
Our Friday is their weekend; our Monday is the second day of their week and the busiest
The fabrication shop, Taipei
Our Friday afternoon is their Saturday morning, which is a working day nobody here uses
three parties · four days of the seven are working days for all of them · Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu
There are four days a week on which a message from here reaches both of these counterparties inside a working day. The two days we habitually send chases are not among them. One team's own job.
Chasing is believed to be ineffective mostly because it is done on the wrong days.
The natural moments to notice that something has not arrived are Friday afternoon, when the week is being closed out, and Monday morning, when it is being opened. Both are close to the worst available times to send a message to a counterparty whose weekend is not yours.
Friday afternoon
A chase written at four on Friday to a Sunday-to-Thursday office lands in the middle of their weekend. It is read on their Sunday, at the top of a mailbox containing everything else that arrived over two days.
It is also read without context, because the original request is now several days back in the thread, and the tone of a chase separated from what it is chasing is always worse than intended.
Monday morning
A chase written first thing on Monday to the same office arrives on their second working day, which is the day their own week's backlog is being cleared. It joins a queue.
Worse, if the original request went out on Thursday, the chase arrives roughly four hours after they came back and read it. From their side the sequence reads: a request, then a chase before anybody could plausibly have acted.
The days that work
For a Sunday-to-Thursday counterparty, a message from a Monday-to-Friday office lands cleanly on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and arrives early enough on those days to be dealt with.
For a six-day shop seven hours ahead, Thursday is the best day: it arrives on their Thursday evening or Friday morning, and if it is not answered then there is a Saturday available before your Monday.
| Chase written | Where it lands, Sun–Thu office | Worth sending |
|---|---|---|
| Monday morning | Their Monday, into the backlog | Poor |
| Tuesday or Wednesday | Their working day, early | Good |
| Thursday morning | Their last working morning | Good, and the last chance that week |
| Thursday afternoon | Their last hours, or their weekend | Poor |
| Friday | Their weekend | Worst |
What to do on Friday instead
The things noticed on a Friday afternoon do not have to be chased on a Friday afternoon. They have to be written down.
A short list — what is outstanding, from whom, since when, and when it was last chased — written at the end of the week and acted on on the following Tuesday is more effective than the same items chased immediately, and takes less total effort because the ones that arrive over the weekend fall off it.
The chase that is worth sending on a Friday
One exception. If the thing is genuinely blocking and the other side has a working Saturday, Friday afternoon here is their Saturday morning and is the single best moment of the week.
That is the six-day case from the panel above, and it is the reverse of the general rule: for a Taipei shop a Friday evening message is an extra working day, while for a Dubai office the same message is two days of nothing.
Which is why the rule to carry is not "never chase on a Friday" but "know which week you are sending into".
The content matters as much as the day
A chase that repeats the original request makes the recipient read the same thing twice.
A chase that adds something — the date it is needed by and why, a narrowing of what is actually required, an offer to accept a partial answer — gives them a way to resolve it quickly.
Still waiting on the signed drawing. If the full approval is going to take longer, a line saying the dimensions are accepted would let us start cutting, and we can take the signature afterwards.
That is a chase, and it is also an escape route. Most of the time the escape route is what gets used, and it arrives faster than the thing originally asked for.
The second chase
If a first chase sent at a good moment produces nothing, the second one should change something rather than repeat the first.
Repeating is the natural move and it is the least effective. The recipient has already read the request twice; a third copy of it adds no information and does add irritation.
What works is changing one of three things: who it goes to, what is being asked for, or what happens if nothing arrives.
I have not heard back on this and I expect it is sitting with somebody who has not seen the background. I am going to assume the 0.5 mm tolerance is acceptable unless you tell me otherwise by Thursday your time, since we need to cut on Friday.
That is a second chase which requires no reply at all to be useful, and which converts a blocking item into a non-blocking one. It is also, in most relationships, the last message that needs to be sent about it.