You're in a weekly business review. Ten people around the table. You give out action items—maybe ten across the hour. Everyone nods. Some take notes. Some don't.

Next week, you walk in. You remember three of those items. You ask about them. Two are done. One person looks confused—they understood the ask differently. Seven items? You don't even remember giving them.

Nobody reminds you. Nobody follows up. Those seven actions dissolve into nothing.

This happens everywhere. I've seen it across a large number of companies—startups, mid-size, and large ones. I lived it myself—until I joined Amazon and was forced into a system that made this problem disappear.

I didn't appreciate it at first. It felt bureaucratic. Why do I have to enter this in a tracker right now? Why can't I just send an email later? But after a few months inside the system, I understood why it works. The discipline isn't overhead—it's the mechanism that makes coordination possible at scale.

I've deployed this system everywhere I've worked since. It's not my invention. It's a battle-tested approach I learned by being inside it.

Here's what actually breaks when action items slip:

You train people that follow-through is optional. Miss a few follow-ups, and your team learns the pattern. "Boss will forget anyway." Your words lose weight. The meeting becomes theater.

Coordination overhead explodes. Without a system, you're chasing people on Slack, sending reminder emails, trying to remember who said what. You become the bottleneck.

The same problems recur. That action item you forgot? It was supposed to fix something. It didn't get done. The problem resurfaces three months later, and everyone acts surprised.

The fix is embarrassingly simple. But most teams don't do it—because it requires discipline, not technology.

The system has three components: a format, a set of rules, and a recurring meeting that makes dodging impossible.

Every action item gets recorded with these fields:

The ETA rule is critical: If you change the date, you don't delete the old one. You strikethrough it and add the new date below. The history stays visible. Everyone can see how many times a date slipped.

Grey — Not started yet. Clock hasn't begun.

Green — On track. Will complete by ETA. Nothing hiding underneath that's actually broken.

Yellow — Delayed but will complete. Requires a PTG: what specifically will get this back on track, and by when?

Red — Blocked. Something outside the owner's control is preventing progress. Requires PTG plus escalation.

Complete — Done. If it was late, the commentary notes: "Completed, delayed by X days from original ETA."

The strikethrough history and completion notes create accountability without confrontation. The data speaks.

Rule 1: Record it then and there.

When an action item is given in a meeting, the meeting pauses. The owner opens the tracker—on screen, visible to everyone—and enters the item. Action, owner, ETA. In front of the room. No "I'll add it later."

This eliminates the "I understood it differently" problem. Everyone sees what was recorded. Clarify now or hold your peace.

Rule 2: Owners update before the meeting.

Not during. Not after. Before.

If the meeting is Tuesday at 10am, your status update is done by Tuesday 9am. No exceptions. On leave? Get someone to update for you. The tracker is never stale when the meeting starts.

Rule 3: The meeting starts with the action tracker.

First agenda item. Always. Before metrics, before updates, before anything else. The tracker is on screen. Everyone sees everyone's status.

This is the forcing function. You can't hide. You can't dodge. Your red items are visible to your peers. The social pressure does the work that reminder emails never could.

Rule 4: The meeting happens. No exceptions.

Tuesday is a holiday? Move to Wednesday. Someone's traveling? They dial in or update beforehand. Earthquake? Okay, maybe reschedule—but it happens that week.

The moment you skip one meeting "because it's a light week," you've created a precedent. The discipline erodes.

Rule 5: Short meetings if everyone updated.

Here's the reward for discipline: if everyone has updated their items and everything is green, the review takes five minutes. "All green, nothing to discuss, moving on."

The meeting expands only when there are yellows and reds to address. The system punishes poor preparation with longer meetings.

Here's what a real tracker looks like mid-cycle. In a live sheet, colors jump out immediately—you scan for red and yellow, skip the green.

What the colors tell you at a glance:

What the strikethroughs tell you:

If someone has three strikethroughs on one item, you don't need to say anything. The data says it. "I see this date has moved three times. What's different about this new date?"

When this is reviewed in the meeting, the conversation is focused:

No wasted time on items that are fine. All attention on items that need it.

The same system works for multi-month projects with dozens of stakeholders. The format is identical. The forcing function is identical. Only the scope changes.

For a complex project—say, launching a new store with 40 stakeholders across construction, IT, legal, training, and operations—you work backwards from the deadline.

Step 1: Assemble all stakeholders in one room. Not their delegates. The actual owners.

Step 2: Work backwards from launch date. "If we open on March 1, when does training need to complete? When does IT need systems live? When does construction need to hand over?"

Step 3: Each stakeholder enters their items into the shared tracker. In the room. With dependencies marked. "I can't start X until Y completes Z."

Step 4: The Gantt emerges from the dependencies. You don't build a Gantt and assign it. The owners build it together.

Once the plan exists, a weekly standup reviews it. Fifteen minutes if everyone updated. The rules are the same:

The strikethrough cascade tells the story:

Item 4 (construction) slipped twice: 15 Dec → 20 Dec → 24 Dec. Two strikethroughs. The downstream impact is visible immediately—items 5, 6, 7 all adjusted their dates once.

In the weekly standup, this is a 30-second conversation:

No one hides. No surprises at launch.

It defeats human memory. You don't have to remember what you asked for. The tracker remembers.

It defeats social avoidance. People don't want to show up with red items in front of their peers. The transparency creates positive pressure.

It defeats coordination overhead. No chasing. No reminder emails. The meeting is the reminder. The tracker is the single source of truth.

It defeats optimism bias. When you have to write down a date—in public—you think harder about whether you can actually hit it. When your slipped dates are visible as strikethroughs, you think even harder.

If you take nothing else from this:

Most leaders manage action items through memory and reminders. They give instructions, hope people follow through, chase when they remember, and accept that some things fall through the cracks.

This is exhausting. And it trains your team that your words are suggestions, not commitments.

The alternative: build a forcing function. Record everything. Review everything. Make dodging impossible.

I've seen this system work at Amazon during the largest crises—the first thing that happens is someone creates a tracker, puts it on screen, and the room starts adding items with owners and dates. From the largest programs to the smallest initiatives. It works because it's simple, it's transparent, and it's non-negotiable.

The meeting gets shorter. The follow-through gets better. Your words regain weight.

100% of your action items will get done—or you'll know exactly why they didn't, exactly when, and exactly who's accountable.

I've shared the actual templates I use—both the WBR Action Tracker and the Project Tracker with dependencies. The examples show mid-cycle data with all the mechanics visible: strikethroughs, status colors, PTG entries, the works.

📎 Download Action Tracker Templates (Excel)

Two sheets with examples, two blank templates. Modify for your context.

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Not my invention. Just a system I learned by being forced into it—and now can't imagine operating without.

What's your system for tracking action items? Does everything actually get done? Let me know in comments.

~Discovering Turiya@work@life