[2021-09-07] On it!
A lot changed in the 33 years that I worked in the federal Public Service—36 years if you count my three terms as a summer student. When I started in government as a student in 1985, employees used typewriters, they received corporate messages via hard copy memos left in their mail slots, and, when they were away from their desks, their phones were answered by a receptionist, who could track them down if the call was urgent.
Within a few years, personal computers replaced typewriters, email replaced memos, and voicemail replaced receptionists.
A few years beyond that, many employees were equipped with cell phones and, later, smart phones, making them reachable at almost any time and any place.
In short, the way we communicated with colleagues changed dramatically in the three and half decades I worked in government. We went from a time when colleagues walked to their coworkers' offices or when bosses called employees on the phone to one where most communication was happening electronically or via voicemail.
This had its benefits, of course, and I took full advantage of all available technology. In my final job, for example, I could be attending a meeting but sending approval on communications products to my staff via email. If a question came up in the meeting, I could fire off a text to my team and get an answer back in minutes.
But electronic communication or voicemail also came with a downside that face-to-face communication or a phone call did not have: it wasn't as easy to tell whether a message communicated was a message received. And even if we were able to track that a message had been received, it was impossible to know whether the recipient was acting on it.
Ten years ago, I wrote a blog post about this very issue. Even then, I acknowledged that more and more work was being assigned via email. For the most part, the system worked, which is why we continued to rely on it. But a lot of things fell through the cracks too. The recipient who failed to respond could always say—legitimately—that they hadn't seen the message, that it had gotten lost in the daily flood of emails, that they had seen it but then forgotten it as more and more correspondence landed in their electronic inbox.
As a manager, I often wondered whether a task I assigned by email was being worked on, especially when the task was time-sensitive. In my experience, two simple words communicated receipt, acknowledgement and action in one fell swoop. Those two words were "On it!"
Five years later, when I became an assistant deputy minister of communications, I found the practice of responding "On it!" was much more commonplace. This expression was particularly helpful when working as a team. An employee could communicate to me and their coworkers simultaneously that they had picked up a task.
I came to love that expression—and still love it today.
It's helpful not only in a professional setting but a personal one as well. Somehow, without my prompting, my children picked up the habit of writing "On it!" when I ask them something by email or text, for example, whether I need to pick up a certain item when I'm out at a grocery store. Receiving "On it!" from one of my kids says, "checking, hang tight, I'll get back to you in a few minutes."
If the people around you aren't in the habit of communicating "On it!" start by doing it yourself. You may find that, over time, your employees, colleagues, friends and family members adopt the practice.
