Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome back to the Total profit podcast. I'm T2. I'm here with Tommy P.
On today's episode, we're going to talk about delegating things that maybe you don't understand.
You can't do that.
It's basically the message, you cannot delegate what you don't understand. You are handing off work. If you're handing off work that you don't understand, don't. You can. You don't get to be shocked when it comes back broken.
So we're going to talk about how real delegation starts with leadership and not abdication. So do you know what I mean by that?
You typically hear about it in the form of like, abdicating the throne, but basically it just means it's a failure to fulfill a responsibility or a duty. So when you are delegating things, you have a responsibility to, to know what you're talking about.
And I love a quote from Einstein.
I used to, I'm very type A and so I tend to overcomplicate things sometimes. And I.
One of the ways that I sort of grew in that was I kept a little sticky note of a quote by Albert Einstein on my computer desk, on my computer screen. And it basically said, if you cannot explain it simply, then you don't understand it well enough. And so really there's so much wisdom in that for me to grow in my own leadership that way, in that it don't make something 72 steps if it only takes three.
If you can get it done in three, why wouldn't you do that?
And really, delegation is about growing and developing your people.
It's not about getting things off your desk. So let's start with that. Tommy, I want to just kind of dive into what is the difference between delegating and dumping.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: No, that's really good. And there's, there's some humor to, to what you were saying, because it truly is that get it off my plate. And I, I expect my, my people to take it and run with it. But, you know, delegating is handing it off with context, clarity, support, and an understanding of what the outcome is going to be. So it's, it's having. Coming into it under control with an expected outcome, you know, versus dumping, where you offload your problems and you pray for a miracle. Like, I hope they get it right. Well, like you said, the minute you hand that off in that situation, you, you lost control of the outcome. You, you, you get what you get.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: So again, your, your, your Einstein reflection is, if you can explain it, you don't know it well enough. So that, that's awesome.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: And you can't expect them to execute on it if you have not given it to them with clarity. So that it's a big word. But that abdication, it, it's not delegation. If your handoff sounds like, hey, can you just take care of this? That's abdication. That's not. And you're setting your team up to fail, you're setting them up to fail. And you don't get to be angry about that because it. You got to take, you got to do a little gut check and look in the mirror about how you delegated something.
Why does that delegation fail so often, especially in the trades and in contracting. Why does that fail so often?
[00:03:35] Speaker B: Oh, it's, it's such a great question. And it's so systematic.
Again, that's our theme we've been preaching on for a long time. It's having those processes in place. There's no clear outcome or metric to show success, no definition of done, no training or processes in place. It's just, well, we'll get it close enough.
And that's not the way to look at it.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: Right.
And there needs to be like mile points and kind of check ins along the way too. Right. And feedback loops, meaning giving feedback to the person you delegated to, to.
Hey, you're starting to veer off course here. This is, this is where we need you to end up. And so stay the course. All right? And it's really problematic if the owner doesn't even know what good looks like or if the owner doesn't even know what, what, what done looks like. So that's problem. You need to understand something completely before you delegate it anywhere.
I, I know you and I joke about this offline quite a bit, but I have been to learn QuickBooks this year. I've always been in corporate America.
I understand corporate finance and so on, but I've never been the hamster on the wheel behind the scenes kind of creating all of the reports and such. And it has been a challenge for me. But before I hand this off to a bookkeeper, a cpa, I am bound and determined that I am going to plow through it myself because I need to understand it before I give it to somebody else. And, and maybe you would disagree with me that I'm not buying back my time. Very well, I will, I will as soon as I get my head around it. But I have to understand it before I delegate it to anybody.
[00:05:20] Speaker B: Yeah. And in buying back, your time is relative, right? It has to be the right time, right purpose.
We had a customer that was growing and he had jobs going. In one job in particular, he sent what he thought was his best employee out there with no direction. And this was a complex job. It was a lot of piece work and cutting and it was like a enormous jigsaw puzzle. And two weeks passed and he finally went out to the job to check in. And it was what he was looking to anticipate was not what he saw. And it was, it was a devastation and it, it ended up costing him a considerable amount of money.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: And I, I would submit to you that the check ins need to happen a lot more frequently in the beginning of the process and at the end of the process so that you know, you know that you've got somebody on the right track. And then at the end, because it finishes up the way you want it to, as they're grinding in the middle, I think that's the best place to extend some trust and, and let them do it. So what, what do, what do business owners need to know before they delegate something?
[00:06:39] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really not that, that complicated. Just the basic structures of the tasks, inputs, outputs, timelines, expectations and accountabilities. You know, we, we come back to this word time and time again that accountability is kind of that, that end board of the, of the project that, you know, we're going to get to, but this is, this is when we need it. And it's very clear that everybody knows what those, those accountabilities are.
[00:07:09] Speaker A: I think you also need to know what some of the common pitfalls are going to be and you need to be skilled enough to be able to anticipate those and how to catch them early so that they don't derail what it is that you're trying to do.
And I love the phrase that you coined about, you know, what is, what does done look like, what is the definition of done?
So what does that success look like?
And conversely, that helps you kind of define what does failure feel like as well. Right. So define the outcome. Give them the tools, the training and the timeline. Review early, review often, and then pull back as they prove their competence to you.
I think primarily in that, in that middle section is going to be the best, the best time to be able to do that.
So speaking of those check ins and having a good sense of when to pull back, how can you delegate effectively without becoming a micromanager?
[00:08:08] Speaker B: A lot of it is communication, you know, kind of taglines that says here's the goal, not here's how I would do it.
It's leading your employee down the path of how you want them to create it, but putting it in terms of direction and guidance, not dictatorship.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: Right.
Those checkpoints can very easily become chokeholds if you're not careful. So make sure that it's just a check in providing some guidance and that your intention really is to give your employee ownership of, of the, of the outcome, not just the task, but of the outcome. Right.
Okay. So with that, I mean, let's talk about the long term payoff. What's the benefit to the business owner of doing this the right way?
[00:09:08] Speaker B: Well, you think of it as, let's say you're going to do a workout and if you put in the plan to work out strategically, you track your rep, repetitions, you, you're building strength. And by doing this with your employees, you're building strength and confidence in them and you're going to, you're actually in training to do a better job down the road. So it's how you think of this. Instead of just a job, this is a step in the right direction that's going to give them those steps of freedom and guidance and expectations to your what you want as an outcome.
[00:09:48] Speaker A: You're creating a team that thinks for themselves. Right. They're not just reacting or they're not looking to you again as the ring leader of the circus for every single little move that they need to make. So you, you, you sort of, by getting yourself out of the weeds, you drive that and you're able to stay out. And then guess what, your business becomes scalable so you can start to grow when you've got good help in place and processes in place that work so that if, if something happens to that good help, you can duplicate it and replicate it very easily.
All of those things are really good, good things.
And performance margin really helps you with that handoff with a lot of confidence. So we have dashboards that give that, that keep visibility into what's going on in your business without hovering over your employees, which is really annoying.
You can track the results of your organization so that delegation becomes very data driven, as it should be, and then you can spend more time leading and less time fixing.
So again, kind of getting ahead of that speeding train and pulling the train forward.
So your challenge for the week is to pick one area that you have been avoiding or that you've been offloading blindly, pick one area that you've been avoiding or offloading blindly and learn enough about it to lead it and then delegate it after that with a real outcome and a very clear follow up.
So let me just recap. Pick one area that you've been avoiding or offloading blindly, learn enough about it that you can lead it and then delegate it with a real outcome in mind and a clear follow up.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: And we talk about these things only because we've been there.
So always remember we're in this together.
And take her. Cool.
[00:11:56] Speaker A: Don't get too excited.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: It's all under control and it's going to be fine.
