The Inescapable Deadline: 5 Reasons Managers of Product Teams Keep Setting Them

Hint: You can forge a better path to product success.

Deadlines don’t motivate; they destroy motivation.

But I can understand why managers set deadlines.

It’s a desperate move to create certainty amidst the uncertainty they face.

I’ve seen many teams, customers, and their products suffering from the fallout of this practice.

• Fear of missing the deadline reduces transparency.
• No space remains for learning, crippling requisite product evolution.
• Stress of delivering on time leads to corner-cutting.
• Hiding from blame and finger-pointing for missed deadlines reduces teamwork.
• Anxiety around getting started increases work-in-progress, missteps, and delays.
  

The drive to set deadlines as a means of control has backfired.

Grasping for certainty without evidence is a delusion.

Keep reading, and you, as a manager of product teams, will see why deadlines persist as a practice. And you will get some tactical countermeasures to combat your tendency to set them.

Why is this an advantage?

It’s simple. Without deadline stress, teams will have space to get to the right product, in the right way, at the right time.

Let’s explore this further.

This year, I’ve committed my focus to a concept called Lean Leverage, as described in my inaugural 2024 post. Each article I craft this year, including this one (the sixth in the series), will focus on an aspect of Lean Leverage. Enjoy and stay tuned for many ways to do more with less.

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5 reasons managers feel deadlines are their only option.

In my 25+ years of consulting companies of many sizes, shapes, and domains, deadlines are a constant, yet unwanted, companion.

Despite all their wicked impacts, deadlines are widely used by managers. Why is this practice so common, given its vile ramifications? It’s complicated.

Below are 5 reasons I’ve seen managers set deadlines (and remedies from my experience).

Reason 1: Everyone else does it.

Peer pressure for sameness can keep a bad habit alive.

When everyone else is setting deadlines, it’s easy to fall in line. And it’s extremely difficult to be the odd duck who isn’t going with the flow.

The fear of being blamed for bucking the deadline habit is real for managers.

And it’s not just your peers.

Your manager expects a deadline, And his or her manager expects a deadline. And so it goes all the way up the chain.

The system is self-supportive of the deadline-driven mantra.

The remedy: Have the courage to break the pattern.

This is the hard part.

Every successful move I’ve seen away from deadline behavior has taken an act of pure courage. Someone had to take a stand.

Waiting for safety may never happen in our deadline-driven existence.

Saying, “No,” to deadlines can be compelling coming from an executive; I’ve seen this move be contagious and stick.

But don’t discount the power of courage from any level of the organization chart. Also, know this, there is courage in numbers. Form a tribe of promoters, join forces with your team, or get support from your leader.

All it takes is one success without a deadline to build momentum to a deadline-free future.

Reason 2: You don’t get the truth.

Managers often find out they are in the dark, unaware of problems (due to wicked deadline loops).

1. Deadlines are set to drive urgency and combat uncertainty.
2. Missed deadlines lead to blame.
3. Blame leads to fear.
4. Fear leads to problem-hiding.
5. Problem-hiding leads to more deadlines, trying to rein in control and light a fire under the team. The viscous cycle continues downward.
   

Deadlines form a pressure cooker in uncertain product efforts, and transparency nosedives. 

The remedy: Embrace the truth when you get it.

Break the pattern by not blaming.

When the truth is not what you want to hear, embrace and celebrate the red. You then will build trust and give your team courage to raise issues in a timely manner. This is not A Few Good Men. You can handle the truth.

Also, perhaps more important, simply don’t set fake deadlines to motivate.

Reason 3: The fear of the lazy team.

“But if they don’t have a deadline, they will goof off.”

To some managers, no deadline is the quickest path to the team taking the day off to play video games. To them, no deadlines leads to bare-minimum, phone-it-in effort.

But using deadlines to motivate is choosing the stick instead of the carrot.

The remedy: Trust the professionals you hired and inspire them.

I’m sure you hired and work with professionals, right?

So, treat them as such. Work with them to co-create an inspiring purpose and meaningful product goals. And support them when they need your help breaking through obstacles they can’t remove.

An inspired team, self-organizing toward a meaningful goal, eclipses any team slogging to meet a boring deadline.

Reason 4: The exception becomes the rule.

“But there are real deadlines. Think Black Friday, tax day, etc.”

Well, of course, date constraints can be legitimate. But that’s not the problem. The issue is when everything is given a deadline, regardless of necessity.

Real date constraints happen, but they are the exception, not the rule.

The remedy: Let deadlines remain exceptions and derisk them.

When real date constraints exist, then deploy risk reduction countermeasures.

• Have a bias for action over detailed planning.
• Experiment and learn early, cheaply, and often.
• Use evidence to chart your shortest, best path to your goal.
• Emerge the simplest solution to meet your user’s need, and say, “No,” to the inessential.
• Focus on finishing one thing at a time, not starting everything at once.
  

Don’t let the exception become the rule, but be smart when it’s real.

Reason 5: My boss, customer, or stakeholder wants one.

“When will it be done?”

Oh my, the dreaded question. We have all been asked this by those we serve. The pressure to please the requestor is intense. This is your moment of truth as a manager. And it typically arrives at the beginning—the moment of highest uncertainty.

The unfortunate path chosen is often to make a promise and set the deadline for the team.

And then, everything goes south.

The remedy: Invite those asking for a due date to join the journey.

Don’t act like you have a crystal ball.

Be humble. Say you don’t know for sure. Instead of offering a date to look confident, invite them to join you and the team along the journey.

Their feedback will provide the learning you need to deliver the right thing sooner.

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That’s it. These are the main reasons for picking the deadline path, as I see them. And hopefully, this gives you some context on how to combat the tendency.

I believe in this: the product world without unnecessary deadlines is a much better place.

Will you help me make this a reality and combat the false delusion of deadlines?

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Related Posts:

You can read a sampling of my other posts on eliminating deadlines below:

How deadline-driven behavior sends your Scrum Teams spinning out of control

Can agile and deadlines exist in perfect harmony?

Remove date-driven behavior to achieve agility—an introduction