Own the task, see it through

See It Through is one of the four values at Color of Vietnam, alongside Taste First, Small Trials and Speak Honestly. Its meaning is plain. When you take on a task, you clarify the outcome, propose the next step, agree with colleagues or partners who does what and by when, and then follow the task until it reaches a conclusion. Seeing it through is not about working longer hours. It is about leaving nothing hanging. This piece describes what the value looks like on an ordinary working day.

Clarify the outcome before starting

Many tasks drift not because they are hard but because two people mean different things by done. So the first question on taking a task is always: what does done look like?

Take sending samples to a buyer. For one person, done means the parcel has left. For another, done means the samples have arrived, with the correct version of the spec sheet, and the buyer has confirmed they received everything. At Color of Vietnam we choose the second meaning, and we say so at the moment the task is handed over. A question that takes ten seconds saves a week of waiting while each side assumes the other is on it.

Propose the next step

The person holding a task is usually the one who understands it best, because they are closest to it. So instead of asking what to do next, we hope to hear: I see two options, I lean towards this one for this reason, what do you think?

That does not mean deciding everything alone. It means bringing a proposal for others to react to rather than an empty question. The proposal can be wrong. A wrong proposal is still better than none, because it gives the conversation somewhere to start.

Agree who does what, by when

When a task involves several people, or an outside partner, we settle three things before leaving the meeting:

• What, in words specific enough that an outsider could understand.
• Who owns it. One person, never the team.
• By when. A date, never soon.

Usually this is a few lines in a message or a small table. The tool does not matter. The habit of settling and writing it down does. It applies to our partner facilities too: after every call, a short email recording what, who and when.

And if you get stuck, say so early. A warning two days before the deadline is news that can be dealt with. A warning on the day is a problem. Seeing it through includes saying when you cannot get there.

Seeing it through is not stubbornness

There is a wrong reading of this value: keep going whatever happens. That is not it. Seeing it through means bringing a task to one of three clear endings: done; stopped, with the reason recorded; or handed over to someone better placed, with a proper handover.

A sample that still misses the intended flavour after three rounds of adjustment can be stopped, and that is a result, as long as we write down why and what we learned. What we do not want is a task that quietly evaporates, with no conclusion and no lesson.

An example from our own desk

A new roll of film for a Let's PLAY rice cracker line once kept jamming on the packing machine at our partner facilities. The colleague responsible for packaging could have reported that the film was jamming and waited for someone else to act. Instead, that colleague called the film supplier the same morning, asked about the thickness and slip of this roll compared with the previous one, requested samples from a different roll, booked a new trial run with the facility, and sent the team a short email: the problem, what had been done, the next step, who and when.

The problem was not solved that day. But it had an owner, a plan and a date. That is what we mean by seeing it through.

Why it matters in a small team

In a small team there is no layer of management to chase tasks. Everyone is the chaser of their own work. If something is left hanging, nobody notices until it becomes a problem for a customer or a partner. That is why we look for this habit in candidates more than for long experience. Experience can be taught. The habit of following a task to its end is much harder to teach.

If you recognise yourself in these paragraphs, have a look at our open roles or send us a general application. When we meet, tell us about a task you saw through to the end, even if the end was a decision to stop.