Do you feel like you can’t trust others to do the job right?
Another one from Dan Martell and his “Buy Back your Time”. I think I mentioned this card already when writing about delegation in general, but this is one of its own as it offers a very practical framework to overcome the usual trap of “I can do this better/faster myself.”
By falling into the trap, not only do we take on tons of tasks where we don’t generate the most value, we are also denying others the learnings from the process. We also remain the only ones who know how to do this particular thing to our own standards for the future, thus maintaining the dependence on us, personally. We tie the business to us and we tie ourselves to the business. As my fellow coach and expert on the matter of succession Richard Bryan says – you WILL leave the business one day. Then what?
I understand the dilemma we are facing here. There is only so much time and “the thing” needs to get done. It also needs to get done right. Nobody will do it as fast or as well as we would, so why bother? Obviously, the last part is a fallacy in itself. We don’t know how well someone can do it until they try. We may even be surprised!
Dan also says: “80% done is 100% awesome.” The 80% is a key here. If we don’t expect perfection, if we take the time to set the delegated team member up for success, and plan on giving the result the required final touches and feedback, we get it all. Save a ton of time, produce the result we envisioned and now have someone we can delegate more to in the future. We improved the SYSTEM of completing stuff rather than just completed stuff and relying only on ourselves.
So how does it work?
The first “10” is the first 10% of the work. That’s on us. Take the time to define the desired outcome, what needs to be accomplished here. Providing a bit of context will also help move things along. What does success look like and what does it mean, as well as what will it mean if this doesn’t get done right? Gather everything that is needed from you to complete the task.
The “80” is on them. Doing the actual work. This may require gathering some resources, or even delegating parts of a task or project further. They now know how to do it because we showed them; right?
Then circle back to us for the final 10%. That’s checking the result, perhaps sending it back with feedback, putting on our own final touches and delivering where it needs to go.
That’s it. I love this framework, especially for the added benefit of thinking “one layer above.” Forcing us to work on the system rather than in it is how teams and ultimately companies succeed.
How do you overcome the “rather do it yourself” fallacy? What are you concerned about when letting go of a project? How can you control or alleviate that concern other than doing the WHOLE thing yourself?
