How to ensure a delegated task gets done the way you want?

There is no leadership without effective delegation skills and most of the time new leaders struggle in delegating effectively. The very first challenge they face is they expected a delegated task to be delivered in some particular way but the outcome their subordinate produced is way off the course. In the end leaders pick the task themselves to finish it off which is a lose-lose situation for both leader and subordinate. They do so because either the time is running out or they believe that doing the task themselves if better alternative than getting it done from their subordinate.

After that, leaders keep wondering what went wrong and why delegation did not produce desired results while searching for a solution they stumble upon creating SMART goals for themselves and their team members in order to make sure they are able to communicate clearly the way they want certain things to be done. The problem with SMART goals is that they give you a framework for defining tasks but provide no way to execute it and without an execution framework, SMART goals will not deliver results. For example, consider following SMART goals

” Hire 15 senior developers in the next 3 months. ” or

“Build a PPT for upcoming sales pitch in next 2 weeks” or

“Grow sales lead generation by 10% in next 3 months”

These goals are Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound. But the truth is, most of the time, the team is not going to achieve that. For example, in case of building PPT your subordinate will come up with PPT which is too short or long, does not have content, facts or information which you want or you hate choice of colours, presentation theme, images etc. You might end up throwing that PPT and building it again yourself.

Your sales team might have a SMART goal but will stumble on some unexpected scenarios where they need to make some decisions themselves and will keep coming back to you again and again for solutions, draining your energy by keeping you busy in the process and thus, defeating the purpose of delegation. So although you made a SMART goal and delegated; it is not going to be completed the way you want. This is not an uncommon situation. Most of us know about smart goals but this generally is not useful when it comes to execution of tasks, especially when they are delegated.

What we need is a complementary framework to execute our SMART goal. Hence introducing MARIGOLD Framework of task Delegation and Execution. The various principles are explained below.

M- Map out Decision Tree

When deciding about the task which needs to be delegated, think about all the decisions your subordinate has to make to get that task completed. Lets call these tiny decision which needs to be made by your subordinate - “Decision Nodes”. The more decision nodes there are in the decision tree; more are the chances that the result will deviate from your expectations because every decision node gives your subordinate room to deviate from your though process.

For example, in the task of building PPT, your subordinate has to decide the number of pages, colour themes; they have to decide which facts to include which and which not to. They have to research some material, build some charts and infographics. These are also the nodes where your expectation might not be fulfilled because every wrong decision will take the subordinate away from desired result.

To solve this, Try to map out these decisions and give directions up front. Think about all the decisions your subordinate has to do to finish the task and try to give them direction on how to make a decision on each decision node. For example, tell them that you want 50 pages PPT, choice of theme which you like, data which needs to be shown in PPT. etc. Your goal should be to reduce decision making nodes in the decision tree.

Important point to remember here is that there is a thin line between helping them and micro-managing them. How much detailed description you want to give to your subordinate also depends on capabilities of your team member also.

A- Assign Steps to Decision Nodes

You can not always map all the decision nodes and some decision nodes need to be handled by subordinates themselves. They need to decide for themselves and make choices. In that case try to give them instructions on how a decision needs to be made and what is important for you and what is not. What are must haves and good to haves.

For example, in a hiring task, where your team is trying to recruit 15 more developer in next three months, let’s say a subordinate needs to filter a candidate for the interview process. Give them instructions or a checklist based on what you want them to filter out a candidate. Give them criteria about qualifications, experience and skill sets. Tell them what kind of candidates you want to hire in your team and what kind of candidates you do not want. In this way, although they are doing the work, they have a framework to make decisions and if they just follow that, they will filter out candidates which you would have done if you were to do those tasks yourself.

Similarly, for creating a PPT for upcoming sales pitch, when your team members has to research some data, you might want to help them what kind of fact you are looking for, or which sources your team member should prefer or avoid.

R- Remove Distracting Decision Nodes

There are some decisions which your subordinate will make while executing delegated tasks which are not contributing too much to the final outcome. There are chances they will start moving in wrong directions and spend too much time where it is not needed. We call them distracting decision nodes. These decision nodes either need to be removed or automated. This is basically a NO-Todo list which we need to give them which states what you do not want. Similarly some tasks can be automated and therefore your people do not have to spend energy on it.

For example, in a hiring task, you can tell your people that you do not want people selected if they have more than 60 days joining period and you also do not want a person selected for an interview if they do not have a particular skill set. This negative todo list will widely improve the quality of leads.

Another example, if the sales team is trying to increase leads, they might be following up with people, sending them emails. Now they have to make a decision which day which prospect needs follow up, which email template needs to be sent. These decision nodes are distractions because they can be automated through use of some software and your people do not have to waste energy in tracking and remembering everything.

If you do not remove distracting nodes, people will waste too much time on unproductive tasks and will produce poor results. Therefore identify them and get rid of those.

I- Invest in written document

Always, always invest in written documents or instructions so that everyone can refer to it in future if they get confused. If this is a task which needs to be done again and again; you probably want to document it for sure and maybe create some training documents as well.

There are many advantages to writing things down. When you are writing it; you, yourself will have a better understanding of what you expect or if there are shortcomings in your plan. Additionally, when you write things down for other people, they can not come to you later and say, “well, i thought you meant this” when they do not follow your instructions properly. Also if this task has to be given to multiple people, you do not have to explain to each one of them when things are written down properly. This written document will serve as instruction in future as well if tasks need to be done again.

G- Give it to right person

Deciding who is the right person is also an important task. No matter how well planned your task was, if it is given to the wrong person, it will surely end up as failure. There are many factors affecting the choice of the right person, such as time availability, interest in tasks, capability and reliability, closeness to the problem of issue, potential to benefit from assignment. These factors can be studied in more detail in chapter How to choose the right person to delegate tasks to?

O- Overcome assumptions

Deciding decision nodes, mapping decision trees and giving it to the right person is only half the work done. Even if you have written instructions carefully, the interpretation might be different in the mind of the person. People might have different ideas or assumptions about what is expected from them even after your best attempts to communicate a task and desired outcome. This generally ends up with a situation where people will tell you “Oh, you meant that but I thought you meant this” and this is a tricky one because now you can not be sure whether to blame them or yourself for failure of the task. Therefore we need to fix this problem in the beginning itself by overcoming false assumptions they have built up in their heads.

This step is required to make sure you and your team members are on the same page. There are no false assumptions and interpretations in the mind of the person who is doing the job. Sit with the person and overcome these in one to one meeting. Tell them to explain what they have understood about the assignment, what is expected from them and how will they approach various decision nodes and make decision along the way. Make sure that the person understands properly what a delegated task is and that his interpretation is not something different from your point of view.

L-Let’s agree on the benchmark

Most of the delegated tasks are either long running tasks, tasks divided into smaller steps or repetitive tasks and they need to be delivered at a certain rate. For example, in a hiring task, if we need to hire 12 people in 3 months, this gives an average of 1 person per week. You can not expect an outcome in the last month only if the first 2 months did not produce results. In the case of generating PPT, if you were to have 100 pages PPT in 4 weeks, do not expect that person to generate 100 pages on the last day , it has to be delivered at a certain pace.

Therefore benchmark needs to be set up with a consistent time interval to track the work progress. We need to agree that to achieve 12 hires in 3 months we need to maintain a rate of 1 hire per week. To deliver a 100 page presentation in 4 weeks we need to deliver 25 pages per week. Important thing to consider is that the benchmark needs to be decided in agreement with the person who has to do the job taking into account what he thinks is feasible for them given their other time constraints. It should not be forced on them, hence the work “Let’s agree” in the title. This benchmark also serves as a checkpoint where we can follow up with the people to see if they are on the right track or not.

D- Do follow up and course correction

Once you have decided a benchmark on a consistent time interval basis; next step is to follow up and see how the work is progressing. Complex assignments surely need a formal follow up session. You want to catch issues early and do course correction in every follow up meeting otherwise you will not be able to meet targets in the end. There are so many unknowns which can happen which can stop the process, sometimes new information comes up or a new development may occur which might alter the plans therefore follow up and course correction is absolutely required. We can use these meetings to provide feedback if necessary. Earlier we find the problem, earlier we can suggest a solution and the last thing we want to happen is that the subordinate fails at his task and hands it over back to us.

Once you start following this MARIGOLD framework of task delegation and execution along with SMART goals, you will see an improvement in your delegation skills and will be able to avoid last minute surprises from your subordinates.

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