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Sometimes you need members of a group to act. Maybe you covered lunch and need everyone to pay you back, or you're preparing a build review and need folks to deliver their components a day in advance.

For reasons which I'll never understand, there are always stragglers. I've seen people sit on their hands instead of sending $10 over Venmo. What's wrong with them? I know they have $10! A whole build pipeline might hinge on someone clicking a single button and somehow they spend hours dawdling before doing it.

In these moments, it's healthy for the a leader to apply pressure, even if it's uncomfortable. A single straggler drags everyone down, and if tolerated often enough, it can set a precedent that the behavior is acceptable.

The challenge is balancing pressure and cruelty. The task might be trivial--just tapping a fingerprint on a scanner. If you could force their finger down, you'd have your $10... but that's assault! On the flip side, repeated reminders feel like nagging and can even trigger a petty revenge of inaction that slows things down more. Somewhere in the middle are public callouts ("Hey everyone, Tyler still hasn't paid me back!") and those are harsh in their own way.

Isn't there a better way?

There is! You can almost always get a good outcome in these scenarios using a simple public checklist. You don't even need a special app. Texting, Slack, whatever messaging platform you're already using works fine.

How it Works - Splitting Bills

Let's say you've just picked up lunch for a group of friends and you need everyone to pay you back. You can send a message like this to the entire group:

Thanks for getting lunch today! Here's what everyone owes:

1. [ ] Jimmy - $10
2. [ ] Kevin - $12
3. [ ] Neil - $13

Then at some regular interval--often daily--send an update:

Reminder what everyone owes:

1. [ ] Jimmy - $10
2. [X] Kevin - $12
3. [X] Neil - $13

As the list fills in, social pressure mounts for anyone whose name isn't checked. They can see that everyone else has paid except them. It's a gentle nudge without direct confrontation. The mechanical nature also makes it less personal: you aren't targeting Jimmy, you're just sending the latest update.

How it Works - Preparing a Build

Now let's take the build review example to see how this operates in a work context. We can send a message like this:

Reminder for the upcoming build review! Please prepare your components by 2025-10-20 and reply in this thread:

1. [ ] Adam - Merge fix for bug #98102
2. [ ] Christian - Smoke test build
3. [ ] Hack - Prepare build
4. [ ] Maddie - Merge hierarchy feature
5. [ ] Mark - Confirm availability to record
6. [ ] Zack - Confirm availability to log bugs

I've used this exact technique to run weekly build reviews. I'd send the message a week in advanced to set expectations, then ping the thread daily. The best part is that folks with dependencies self-police. I didn't have to chase Adam to merge his fix because Christian couldn't smoke test without it. He'd help apply pressure to keep things moving. As a bonus, folks with scheduling conflicts usually spoke up on day one, giving us plenty of time to adjust.

In both examples, the checklist creates a mechanism for healthy social pressure. It removes the need for direct confrontation while still applying enough pressure to get things done. The lead establishes the social framework and the group dynamics take care of the rest.